By NELSON JOHNSON
ATLANTIC CITY — NUCKY JOHNSON’S town can still throw a party. Tens of thousands of fans recently flocked to Atlantic City for two free concerts on the water’s edge, first by Blake Shelton and then by Lady Antebellum. With casinos shutting their doors, leaving thousands jobless, these are just the type of fun events that the resort city needs if it is to survive. But some businesses misbehaved. Several casinos charged concertgoers $50 for parking, five to 10 times the usual rate. Some people in this city never miss the opportunity to sacrifice long-term vision for a fast buck.
Since the arrival of casino gambling in 1978, Atlantic City has squandered one opportunity after another. Much of the city looks as drab and dreary as it did before the casinos opened. Many buildings abandoned in the early 1970s — the last time the resort hit bottom — still haven’t found a use. The people in City Hall can’t decide whether to let them stand or knock them down, creating more empty lots. For large portions of the city, it’s as if gambling never happened.
For 20 years Atlantic City had most of the nation’s gamblers to itself, but the city’s leaders failed to exploit that position by diversifying the local economy. Huge casino profits and tax revenues rolled into town like tidal waves of cash. Some casino operations reinvested in the city better than others, but City Hall frittered away many millions on salaries and contracts with power brokers’ pals. No thought was given to a serious citywide capital improvement program.
The easy money generated complacency, and now we’re paying for it. There are more than 60 places to gamble east of the Mississippi, not counting online. Vacationers don’t have to travel to Atlantic City to visit a casino, and they won’t, unless we give them more reasons to come.
The key to the future lies in the past. Atlantic City was built on “spectacles”: crowd-drawing events from free concerts, boxing matches and beauty contests to art shows, beer festivals and basketball tournaments. Founded in 1854 as an experiment in social planning, it was the first city in America conceived solely as a resort. With the singular purpose of providing leisure-time activities for visitors, it has no other reason to exist.
Yet implicit in this experiment is that vacationers’ tastes are forever changing and so, too, must Atlantic City. Keeping the experiment flourishing, by perpetually reimagining an up-to-date resort economy, requires each generation to develop a new vision.
In the 19th century, Atlantic City wasn’t so much the “world’s playground” as Philadelphia’s watering hole. Excellent railroad service made it easy for Philadelphia’s immigrant factory workers to break away from the staid City of Brotherly Love. The resort reached the zenith of its popularity in the ’20s. To quote one old-timer, “Prohibition didn’t happen in Atlantic City.”
Boss of the city throughout this era was Enoch “Nucky” Johnson (no relation to me). He dominated political and social life from 1911 to 1941, when he went to jail for tax evasion. Nucky understood that repeat business by vacationers was indispensable. Unlike Nucky Thompson, the character based on him in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” Johnson ruled with a velvet hammer. His power was such that he never needed violence to get his way. (Still, I can picture him handling the money-grubber demanding a $50 parking fee for a free concert. It wouldn’t happen a second time.)
Despite being a corrupt autocrat, Johnson had the foresight to invest in the future. During Prohibition, while the bars, nightclubs and hotels were rolling in cash, he knew it couldn’t last forever and rallied the city to construct a first-rate entertainment venue in the form of the Atlantic City Convention Hall, now known as Boardwalk Hall. Although the city saw a steady decline in visitors following the repeal of Prohibition, the venue remained a draw, as it does today.
Unfortunately, Johnson also left behind a community so acculturated to political bossism that when the “Organization” finally collapsed in 1971, the city was rudderless. Machine politics was replaced by an endless free-for-all among hapless politicians hoping to be the next boss. (Few succeeded; some went to jail.) Those who did make it into office used the city’s payroll to swell the ranks of their supporters. Today the city has one of the highest ratios of government employees to population in the country. With so many tax dollars going to salaries, there’s little left for anything else. Despite its corruption, Johnson’s machine didn’t bloat City Hall’s payroll and delivered essential municipal services in a competent manner. That’s not true today.
City Hall is where innovative ideas go to die. There has yet to materialize a sustained effort to rethink the city’s role in the national economy and rebuild it into a safe, clean, first-rate resort. Any attempts at “planning” are smothered in the cradle by petty political interests.
It’s not hopeless. There’s more to Atlantic City than casinos. While gambling revenue is plummeting, retail and restaurant profits are rising. Hiding in plain sight are splendid assets: the mighty Atlantic Ocean, beautiful beaches, easy access by one-fourth of the nation’s population, the Boardwalk, modern convention facilities, an excellent international airport 10 miles away, institutions of higher learning eager to help, and finally, a skilled work force to make things run smoothly.
We just need a City Hall that can free itself from Nucky Johnson’s legacy of corrupt patronage, while embracing his example of creative foresight.
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