September 27, 2011
An Atlantic City Blueprint
Atlantic City is an amazing city. I grew up south of there in Longport and personally love the area. I was very fortunate to have begun my career there working for my friend Joel Bergman on the Golden Nugget. It was an amazing time in the late 1970s and '80s. I can remember when there were 57 casinos planned or being constructed in Atlantic City; one was even located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Of course the iconic hotel, the Burj Al Arab, was built 30 years later, making Dubai famous instead of Atlantic City.
Atlantic City's history has been a series of short boom and bust cycles, starting with the United States Hotel burning down in the mid-1800s. The gaming legislation of 1976 created an incredible boom that eventually built a $5 billion industry. Those regulations, combined with other circumstances, eventually led to the current demise.
