Atlantic City Hits a Streak

By Christopher Byron

Day trippers turn the Jersey Shore into Las Vegas East

At 6 each evening, a plush white-red-orange-and-yellow Dash 7 deHavilland jet takes off from New York City's Butler Marine Air Terminal in Queens. Aboard are 48 or so professional and business people, but the flight is pure pleasure, the complimentary champagne flows and, best of all, the round-trip ticket is free. Thirty-five minutes later, the aircraft touches down near Atlantic City, and after a ten-minute ride into town, the jetting junketers are at the crap and blackjack tables of Resorts International's huge Casino Hotel. Resorts expects each of them to wager at least $1,000 and is privately counting on earning an average of about 18-c- on each dollar bet before they are whisked back home at the end of the evening.

By such marketing moxie has the gambling industry of Atlantic City, N.J., come of age. When it was created, following a statewide referendum in 1976, doubters spoke up quickly. Many believed that casino betting would do little more for the once flashy seaside resort than add to the squalor and corruption that had built up since the city's heyday in the 1930s and 1940s. Practically no one had the temerity to predict that gambling on the Jersey Shore would one day rival the goings-on in Las Vegas.

Today it clearly does. Though Atlantic City has only nine casinos, and less than one-fifth the casino floor space of Las Vegas, gambling during the summer high season produced $446.5 million in revenues; this was 24% more than in the previous summer and only slightly less than the $455 million raked in by Vegas casinos during that period. Moreover, the gap has continued to narrow this autumn. Says Steven Norton, executive vice president for Resorts International, which operates the oldest, largest and most successful casino in the city: "By 1984, gambling revenues in New Jersey will surpass those in Las Vegas." During October, he notes, Atlantic City's revenues jumped a startling 39% over those of the previous year.

More than 40,000 jobs have been added to Atlantic City's payroll, helping to cut unemployment in the area from 12.2% in 1976, before casino gambling began, to 8.9% now. Tax revenues from the casinos will line the state's coffers with some $100 million this year.

A combination of demographics and canny marketing explains Atlantic City's success in competing with Las Vegas. The Nevada gaming mecca, situated 300 miles from the population center of its major market, Southern California, has suffered badly from the recession as tourism has dwindled. Several casinos there, including the famed Aladdin and the Dunes, are reportedly for sale, as is the Riviera, a once popular showcase for Hollywood performers.

By contrast, Atlantic City has benefited enormously from its proximity to the residents of New York City, 100 miles to the north, and to more than 50 million other people living within 300 miles of the city's famed Boardwalk. That is five times the size of the market the casinos of Las Vegas can draw on for regular customers.

Moreover, Las Vegas depends on overnight guests for the bulk of its business, while day trippers predominate in Atlantic City, and in such numbers that during 1981 the city pulled ahead of Florida's Walt Disney World to become the most popular single travel resort in the U.S. Says Lee Isgur, a respected gambling-industry analyst with the New York City investment firm of Paine Webber Mitchell Hutchins Inc.: "Basically, the eastern half of the country has discovered the excitement and glamour of legalized casino gambling. Millions of people can now drive two or three hours at the most, gamble for the evening, then turn around and go home."

Once in the casinos, from the glittering Golden Nugget to the garishly ornate Caesars Boardwalk Regency down the street, the visiting gamblers can be seen pressed six and eight deep against the gaming tables; at every wall, hordes of people furiously feed quarters and dollar coins into slot machines, sometimes operating two capricious bandits at a time.

Despite the interior excitement and free-spending atmosphere, much of Atlantic City remains pocked with urban blight and decay. Worse, state officials are concerned about the infiltration of organized crime into the business and last week unsealed an indictment against several people, some of whom are thought to have Mafia ties, for tampering with slot machines at Caesars. Even so, investors who shunned Atlantic City when gambling was first made legal five years ago are now having hasty second thoughts. Holiday Inns and the Trump Organization have broken ground on a jointly owned $200 million hotel-and-casino complex adjacent to the Atlantic City Convention Hall. Hilton Hotels Corp. has also decided to open up in the city and earlier this autumn announced plans to construct its own $250 million hotel-and-casino complex. Resorts International is planning additional construction featuring a second casino and a sports arena. Both the Golden Nugget and Caesars are preparing additional casino sites of their own. It seems that Atlantic City's casino operators are following a time-honored practice of many high-rolling gamblers: doubling after a winning bet.

--By Christopher Byron.

Reported by Sue Raffety/Atlantic City

With reporting by Sue Raffety/Atlantic City

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