By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
Perhaps it was a sign when just weeks into the new year of 2014, the first of what would be four casinos shuttered in Atlantic City. 9,000 people would eventually be left without jobs and gaming revenue would struggle to see profits.
In Nov. of 2014, Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian said in an interview with NJTV News, “Certainly Atlantic City is a book and this is just another chapter, and the concept of casinos being all by themselves east of the Mississippi is gone.”
As Guardian took office as the first Republican to hold the seat in 20 years, that chapter would continue to unfold as a story everyone wished would end.
“They are choosing to close a profitable casino while they’re choosing to spend $880 million to build a brand new casino in New York– which is competition to us,” said Asm. Chris Brown.
“It’s impacting our whole family. We got a mortgage we got everything, and I got two kids in college,” said former Showboat employee Dean Graziani in an interview with NJTV News in Aug.
The Aug. 31 closure of Showboat Casino would spur an outcry against talks of casinos at the Meadowlands in north Jersey.
Rippling to another major closure just a day later- the $2.4 billion bankruptcy filing revel casino- just two years after it opened the doors. Trump Plaza would soon follow suit.
“There’s a lot of people are sitting around right now figuring out what they’re gonna do,” a former Trump worker told NJTV News in Aug.
In Sept. Gov. Chris Christie said, “This unfortunately was inevitable, it was an inevitable occurrence.”
A major airline pulled its contract with the city’s airport. Bids were placed, bids were lost as hopes of reviving or reselling some of the casinos waned.
An economic summit held by the state’s top dogs lead to a series of reforms.
“Chief among the recommendations from John and his team is the creation of an emergency manager for Atlantic City that role would be an expansion of the current statutory fiscal oversight we currently have in AC,” said Christie in Nov.
“We know that we have issues, it’s about the transition from being strictly a gaming mecca to being a whole lot more. So transition to having a lot of events that don’t have anything to do with gambling,” said Guardian in Nov.
It wasn’t all bad news– The Miss America Pageant made its return home since it left in 2006. And Stockton College secured an $18 million deal with Showboat to open a new campus there next fall. The state will give the city a short-term $40 million loan and Wells Fargo agreed to pay off $26 of the $32 million revel tax bill.
What’s next is a lot of cautious optimism. The city still generates more casino revenue than just about every state in the country with 4 million to 5 million people taking trips there every year. If officials are successful in turning it into more of a resort destination, it may be worth betting on.