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With casinos opening all around Atlantic City, in nearby Philadelphia as well as Delaware and New York, players are exiting A/C in droves to go to closer venues and take advantage of more lucrative promotions to get them there.
As it stands right now, there are 3 Atlantic City properties that are already in dire straits and in jeopardy of closing. Trump Marina, Resorts and the Hilton.
The situation will only get worse as table games will be coming to the nearby competition within the next few months.
The question one has to ask is does A/C need another casino or better yet can it afford one?
What is the price it will have to pay?
Sure, we would all like to see a new glitzy glamerous place to go to but what will be the real cost.
In today's newspaper and if you looked at Archie Black's post and link you will see that 2 diffferent union factions actually came to fisticuffs over this unfinished project. The building trades unions and members of local 54 which represent the casino workers.
Granted the building trades union would like to get back to work and finish their job. Their gain will be short termed as when the project is done, they will move on.
Imho, local 54 is looking at it in more of a practical manner.
In order to finish this project there is additional financing needed somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3 billion.
As it stands now, the only party that has shown any interest to loan these monies is Red China.
So you have to ask yourself, would you like to see more of your money exit this country especially to go to an unfriendly nation?
Secondly Revel wants a $300 million dollar tax break over the next 10 years (Though I think today's article said 20 years)
New Jersey is already a cash strapped State with a defecit of $11 billion so even if this $300 million is spread out over 10 years, where is the money coming from ?
The answer is simple the taxpayer is once again being asked to subsidize private industry.
Yes people, this $300 million is coming out of OUR pockets.
The problem that should be addressed first is what is the gaming community in A/C doing to not only preserve it's player base but to get back a portion of those that have already exited.
To me, it appears to be very little.
The way I see it is that if Revel is completed without players returning, it could very well have more of a negative effect in the long run.
Jobs at Revel will go to those 100's or perhaps 1000's of casino workers that live close by that have already been out of work for long periods of time. Some workers will jump ship and look for a better deal and Revel will be staffed with 3, 4 or maybe 5,000 workers..... That is initially.
As a result we will look at thousands becoming unemployed when smaller properties such as Hilton, Resorts and Trump Marina might be forced to close their doors.
Further down the road, as the shine of the new property wears off layoffs there will begin also as they have done so in every other casino in the past.
The end result, more jobs or perhaps even less?
The question we need to ask is not does Atlantic City need another casino nor do we want another casino but can we afford it?
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