The boardwalk pavillion at Roosevelt Place (with no roof) and the boarded up building at Lincoln Place (tan building) are eyesores. Governor Christie's report talks about the transformation and expansion of the Atlantic City Boardwalk into a more traditional New Jersey Boardwalk experience. Including development of the Lower Chelsea section of the boardwalk, downbeach from Albany Boulevard. Tuesdat, July, 26, 2010 ( Press of Atlantic City / Danny Drake)
By MICHAEL CLARK Press of A.C.Staff Writer | Friday, July 30, 2010
ATLANTIC CITY — What is the true New Jersey boardwalk experience? To Gov. Chris Christie, it’s something you can’t find in Atlantic City. Not yet, at least.
The governor’s bold plan to take over Atlantic City’s tourism management centers on how to remake the Boardwalk into a family-friendly destination to counter the adult entertainment the casinos have always provided, but the family-oriented entertainment industry might not be on the same page.
Christie’s plan, vaguely outlined in a report by his Advisory Commission on Gaming, Sports and Entertainment, includes focused initiatives such as developing the mainly residential Boardwalk in Lower Chelsea to support the broader effort to expand the nation’s oldest wooden walkway “to reflect a true New Jersey boardwalk experience.”
The report mentions the boardwalks in Ocean City and Wildwood as potential models for Atlantic City’s revitalized Boardwalk, including attracting the leading businesses in those cities to this resort. But whether those businesses would be willing to make the investment here is unlikely, several business owners said.
Gillian’s Wonderland Pier in Ocean City is one of the businesses that the Governor’s Office envisioned joining the new Boardwalk lineup, according to a copy of a conceptual map released last week. Jay Gillian, the pier’s owner, said that idea will likely remain a concept.
“If they want to try to bring something like an amusement park in, they need to find their identity first,” Gillian said of Atlantic City. “I know how hard it is to run an amusement park in this state. To start an amusement park in Atlantic City would be near impossible to really do it.”
Will Morey, owner of Morey’s Pier in Wildwood, said the same, arguing that if Atlantic City hopes to reinvent itself, it needs to focus on “being unique, not duplicating.”
“Having a carbon copy of Wildwood is not going to get the job done,” he said. “It’s not really an environment that encourages the development … Las Vegas tried to do the same thing, and we saw what happened to them. They had to go back and commit to what makes them Vegas with their ‘What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas’ (ad campaign).”
Some of the problems with establishing their businesses here, Gillian said, are not unique to Atlantic City. Strict state regulations and trying economic times would play a large role in keeping Gillian’s from expanding to the resort. But Gillian fears the clientele wouldn’t support multiple amusement parks.
“I know they have the Steel Pier there, which does well,” said Gillian, who also is Ocean City’s mayor. “But I think more than that might dilute it.”
Family fun in Atlantic City
Anthony Catanoso runs Steel Pier, located near the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort. Although his property sits in a busy section of the Boardwalk and has attracted a healthy amount of business during each of the 19 summers he’s operated the site, he’s always fought to get the support of Atlantic City.
“Nothing frustrates me more than when people say there’s nothing for families to do on the Boardwalk. I pull my hair out,” Catanoso said. “We’re right under their nose and they don’t know it.”
The Steel Pier operator has been struggling to gain acceptance in Atlantic City, both with city officials and with Trump Entertainment Inc., which controls his company’s lease at the pier.
“The town was never receptive to us,” he said.
Catanoso’s only memory of city government officials lending a helping hand dates to the mid-’90s, when Ken Platt, the city’s Director of Planning under former Mayor James Whelan, assembled the Atlantic City Attractions Group, a small collection of family-based entertainment providers.
The group eventually developed a brochure, funded in part by the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, to get the word out about the resort’s nongaming activities. But complaints about the brochure from those not included eventually caused the effort to fade away.
Development plans at Trump have kept lease agreements limited to two or three years, hampering Catanoso’s investment ideas. They include preliminary plans to construct a $4 million rollercoaster on the pier, the type of major family-oriented development that the Governor’s Office is striving for.
Catanoso said recent discussions with Trump since Christie’s Atlantic City visit have been positive and he is optimistic that a considerable extension could be reached.
But some say separating those two industries — the casinos and the family attractions — is a key to success.
“They’re not going to work hand-in-hand,” said John Siciliano, executive director of the Greater Wildwood Tourism Authority. “They would have to be two separate destinations.”
That means defining the Boardwalk first as a family destination and second as an access point for casinos. This could be the reason Christie’s conceptual maps put the “entertainment for all ages area” of the Boardwalk in Lower Chelsea, a residential area already removed from the casinos. The area features two blighted properties that recently ranked on Mayor Lorenzo Langford’s top 10 list of city eyesores.
Developing Lower Chelsea
The section, from Albany Avenue to the Ventnor border at Jackson Avenue, currently offers a mixture of older residential buildings, including homes and condominium high rises, most of them maintained, but some abandoned and dilapidated. There also is a collection of vacant lots, including the grassy tract meant to be The Breakers, a condominium project stalled by the national recession.
One of city government’s biggest failures in the area is the Boardwalk pavilion at Roosevelt Place, designed to be a spot where strollers can sit and take in the scenic ocean view. Instead, it’s become a rusted, skeleton-like structure where passers-by are more likely to shield their eyes.
“It isn’t anybody’s fault,” said Tim Mancuso, the city councilman who represents the section. “The pavilion just got caught up in the swing of different administrations.”
The councilman said he fully welcomes state assistance to redevelop the area and rid the section of the blight, but re-establishing it as a family entertainment district doesn’t seem plausible.
“I don’t think he’s talking about anything further down ,” he said of the governor. “Anything further down you really don’t have land.”
Radio personality and Press columnist Seymour “Pinky” Kravitz, who heads the city’s Boardwalk Committee, said he also opposes commercial development in the Lower Chelsea area.
“I don’t go along with that,” he said. “This sounds like someone that’s really not familiar with the Boardwalk.”