ATLANTIC CITY – The Boardwalk can?t catch a break.
For the past two decades, Atlantic City?s casino industry has been under siege from gaming competition in neighboring states.
The Southern New Jersey seaside resort, where saltwater taffy was created in the late 1800s, which thumbed its nose at Prohibition in the 1920s and was the inspiration for the board game Monopoly, once owned the monopoly for casinos in the East.
But starting in the mid-1990s, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia and New York legalized gaming. The competition, combined with the recession, took away business and caused Atlantic City?s annual casino revenues to fall more than 41 percent between 2006 and 2012.
A comprehensive reform package pushed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2011 that created the Atlantic City Tourism District and focused new attention on boosting the city?s 12 hotel-casinos ? nine on the famous Boardwalk and three in the Marina district ? was just beginning to take hold in October.
Then Superstorm Sandy washed ashore.
Atlantic City evacuated residents while casinos and other businesses closed as a precaution.
The city was spared the brunt of the storm, but emotional damage remains.
?It?s a shame because it felt like we had some momentum building before Sandy hit,? Tropicana Atlantic City President Tony Rodio said in an interview in late April.
Rodio has spent 30 of his 33 years in the gaming industry working in Atlantic City.
?No question, we had taken some tiny steps forward and then got pushed five steps back,? Rodio said. ?It?s really hard to say if the whole effect of Sandy is behind us.?
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Source: Howard Stutz (2013). Battered Atlantic City seeks to reinvent itself as destination resort,
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/casinos-gaming/battered-atlantic-city-seeks-reinvent-itself-destination-resort?published May 19, 2013. Viewed May 21, 2013,