Tomorrow, the State Assembly is expected vote on a bill legalizing sports betting. Gov. Chris Christie has already telegraphed he’ll sign it even though professional sports leagues don’t like it. The push to build new casinos in the Meadowlands is gaining steam. Wealthy Republican donor Sheldon Adelson says he’d be interested in building one. Former chair of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority Carl Goldberg says a casino license at the Meadowlands could be worth as much as $1.5 million for the state. Goldberg told NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams that tax revenues gained from a casino in North Jersey could be used to redevelop Atlantic City, so it would not depend on gaming to survive.
Goldberg said that gaming surrounding the state of New Jersey in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware has become ubiquitous so dollars that should stay in state are going across the borders to the surrounding states.
He said that each casino appeals to a different demographic and so the sense he gets is that the casinos that would potentially be built just north of the New Jersey border would be a very high end demographic casino that would appeal to a VIP market. He said once one of those is built and establishes itself in that region, it makes it much harder for New Jersey to open a similar kind of casino.
Goldberg said in retrospect, it appears that the American Dream, formerly called Xanadu, in the Meadowlands, was a colossal failure but a lot of what transpired was a result of the 2008 financial meltdown, when the mortgagee went bankrupt during the middle of construction. He said the project was struggling and he believes that its demise was partially due to outside forces that couldn’t be controlled. He said that he believes Triple Five is going to finish the project and he is confident that when it eventually opens, it will appeal to what is one of the wealthiest demographics in the United States and be everything people hoped it would be.
“Atlantic City is struggling but nothing about what we do or don’t do in the Meadowlands is going to help Atlantic City recover. I would say to you the dollars that are gained in tax revenues from casino gaming in northern New Jersey can in fact be used to redevelop Atlantic City in a way that does not make it so reliant on gaming to survive,” said Goldberg.
There is talk that a convention center should be built in the Meadowlands. Goldberg said that a convention center and a casino are symbiotic. He said that he thinks they would work together, where the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts. He said a casino brings conventioneers and a convention center helps feed a casino. He said that the two of them adjacent to each other makes a tremendous amount of sense.