Here’s a holiday update on the status of Pinnacle’s much-ballyhooed Atlantic City project. Remember the billboards? From the AC Press:
The site has become yet another vacant city lot, a prominent symbol of broken promises and the weak economy.Fences line the gravel lot dotted with weeds and a few scattered slabs of old concrete. Local government has no power to change the situation.”They put 3,000 people out of work, they took away valuable ratables and we let it happen,” said Councilman Dennis Mason, head of the council's Planning and Development Committee, of Pinnacle's decision to demolish the Sands. “We just kicked ourselves in the butt again.”The collapse of Pinnacle's bold plans affect more than just the 20-acre property.The 74-year-old city post office across the street has been shuttered since the Sands demolition. It is scheduled to be demolished as part of project to widen Martin Luther King Boulevard, plans made in anticipation of Pinnacle's arrival. Businesses around the site on Pacific Avenue, like Fischer's Flowers and a multicultural store called Wada International Store, have either moved or closed.Other Boardwalk businesses moved out after Pinnacle raised the lease costs on storefronts they now own. They replaced some stores with new tenants, but the facades have been damaged after store signs were torn down and replaced with cost-saving banners.”If you look at that area, it would be fair to compare it to Berlin after the war,” Police Chief John J. Mooney III said. “That whole neighborhood has been decimated by the demolition.”
I always thought that if they had an All-American Exposition that celebrated the unique architectural contributions of different American cities (New York brownstones, Philadelphia rowhouses, etc), Atlantic City would be represented by a vacant lot. I guess it’s ingrained into my mentality, having grown up in post urban-redevelopment Atlantic City, seeing plenty of empty lots all over.
The worst news about this story is that Pinnacle’s bottom line in Atlantic City–even with the costs of maintaining the “hole” thrown in–are better than those of three real casinos with thousands of slot machines and hundreds of hotel rooms. From January 1 to Sept 30, 2009, the Atlantic City Hilton lost nearly $20 million, Resorts and the Tropciana lost about $18 million, and Trump Plaza lost almost $5 million from their operations. So if Pinnacle’s only flushing two or three million a year down the hole in the middle of the Boardwalk, they’re actually coming out ahead, and that’s not even factoring in the costs of building, interest on bonds, and such.