By Lauren Wanko
NJ Today
It’s the latest stop on Gov. Chris Christie’s Jersey Shore tour and Atlantic City’s newest addition — Margaritaville and Landshark Bar & Grill at Resorts Casino Hotel.
“I do think that to some extent we’ve been presented with an opportunity, an opportunity that we would have never asked for in the aftermath of Sandy last Oct. 29. But it is an opportunity up and done the Jersey Shore to hold on dearly to those things that are most important in our tradition but also to hit the reset button on things that we wish we would have done differently before but now have a chance to do differently now for the people of Atlantic City we’re hoping to hit that reset button with you, to be able to see and do things differently than we’ve seen them and done them before,” Christie said.
Atlantic City officials are banking on the $35 million Margaritaville complex, insisting it will attract a different target audience — non-gamers. Casino revenue continues to decline.
For the first quarter of 2013, the 12 casinos reported total revenue of $920 million, a 10.4 percent decline from the same period last year.
Still, sales by third party businesses are up over 32 percent.
“A lot of came from all these new additions and the properties like Revel added a lot,” said David Rebuck.
Revel, Atlantic City’s newest resort, has been plagued with financial woes. Revel recently emerged from a pre-packaged bankruptcy.
“They’re taking steps now out of bankruptcy, during their public meetings with us they discussed different plans and marketing,” said Chairman of the Casino Control Commission Matt Levinson. “They’re really getting back to the Atlantic City model to a sense but there’s still that non-gaming aspect of Revel that is full. People are coming.”
As for the city’s unemployment rate, it jumped to 13.8 percent in March — up from 13.6 percent from the same period last year. That’s higher than the state’s March jobless rate of 9 percent.
Officials hope additions like the Margartivalle complex, which just hired 600 new employees, will help change that. And then there’s internet gambling.
“We’re in a very aggressive time schedule. Best case scenario we are gonna be up and running in nine months,” Rebuck said.
Meantime, Atlantic City’s leaders remain optimistic about the resort town’s latest addition.
“We’ve gotta wait for the casinos to stabilize a little bit. They’ve declined. Revenues have been on the decline. There’s gonna be big surprise, lots of competition, a slack economy but once they stabilize and begin to improve their operations, and we do these other things, these complimentary things, we’ll be able to make that difference so that we’ll do something together and create together what we can’t do alone,” said John Palmiere of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.