When heading to AC and points south, to avoid the GSP from the New Brunswick area, I used to head down 130 or NJTPK to Hightstown area then take some local roads to hok up with 539 through the pinelands.. pass some tank crossing signs along the way.. they are a hoot you don't see every day. 539 hits the GSP south of the Rt 72 LBI exit.. bypassing most of the traffic south.
OT: Atlantic City
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539 gets you down to exit 58, I believe. This was critical prior to the lane expansion in that area.
you can hit some backed-up intersections.. haven't done it in awhile.. and there is always the danger of slow-pokes in front of you for long distances.. but it was a pleasant drive compared to parkway traffic. Always wanted to stop at one of those fire tower lookouts to see the spreading pinelands in all their boring glory.. but never did.. now I understand all those towers are fenced and locked away.. too dangerous.
No. A.C. was a dump 20 years before, during and after gambling. The problem is low income housing. Great shore towns dont need gambling. Ac used to be great. They built low income housing projects and it has been a ghetto ever since.
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Debt for publicly funded so called private projects.
Who do you think is putting up the money for blatstein project?
No. The people who live in low income housing would destroy the neighborhood AGAIN. That is why A.C. went down the toilet in the first place.
No need to make anyone whole. We already tried your plan and it destroyed the city. The poor had an opportunity, they wasted it and destroyed the city.
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Released an hour ago.
Idk about that far down during COVID, but last summer from 98 to the Raritan, yes.
Ocean County beaches set records in beach badge sales. Some towns almost double normal years.
has less than 16,000 hotel rooms... if they were all booked by 2 people for 365 days that's almost 12 million right there. The likelihood of that is low.. BUT.. I always figured most of the visitors were day visitors and repeat visitors.
Nine casinos alone have over 43,000 parking spaces. And, imho, they prove that cities like New York who want congestion pricing to reduce traffic is just nuts... build more parking spaces than you need.. then people will drive in, find a spot, and reduce traffic in the streets looking for spots. New Brunswick should take note..
You are off to a good start but don’t forget all the non-casino hotel rooms. Big properties like Sheraton, Wyndham, Claridge and Showboat and also all the small hotels. Plus the Absecon motels.
And all the other parking, such as the garage at the outlets. And even street parking for day trippers.
And the visitors coming in just for dinner and/or shows. Some who park in restaurant lots.
And a lot of those parking spaces all over town turn over two or more times in a day as the morning and afternoon crowd departs and the night crowd arrives.
And though bus and train visitors aren’t as numerous as before they still do come in decent numbers.
There’s a lot to add together.
And the people who park in front of my driveway, because the city has not repainted the lines after I installed it. There's one more per week approximately...
I used to drive down to AC every week, since my Security Company had the Disney retail store contract, checking of the guards appearance etc. The parking lot in front of that mall and the HUGE Nike store was NEVER full.
That new number of 27,000,000 divided by 365 just makes the claim more silly at 74,000 a day visitors.
That new number of 27,000,000 divided by 365 just makes the claim more silly at 74,000 a day visitors.
Try stopping at Lucilles diner. Awesome breakfast and very reasonably priced.
The source for the hotel rooms was for the whole city.. a big casino hotel might have 1100 rooms... there aren't many of those.. not sure if it counted the surrounding towns.. but you'd think the parking spaces figure.. if you could get one for the whole city.. could be a better measure.. because, I'd imagine most drive in.. even people staying at hotels.. I suppose you could check how many tour busses dump patron there as well.
If we think of it this way.. take a busy beach town.. say seaside heights.. which recently announced cutting capacity in half to 7500. But lets go with the 15K figure and say they maybe average half that for a season.. then, take seasonality out of it.. AC is year-round and we are using this as a point of comparison.
Just 7500 people a day, every day, comes to over 2.7M
So.. to get to that AC 26M filgure.. we multiple by 10.
Do you think AC can pull 75,000 people a day.. on average? I don't know.. seems a bit high.. but certainly is possible.. the capacity of hotels and parking spaces says they can handle that.
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Back of the envelope calculations to sanity test the 25 milllion figure I gave:
According to DGE reporting the casino-hotels have 15,102 rooms. See page 5
Full-year occupancy rates at the casino-hotels is usually reported to be around 80%.
Showboat as 1,331 rooms (I don’t know if both towers are open year-round), Sheraton 502, Claridge 400, Wyndham 296 = 2,529
It’s just my own guess but there must be a MINIMUM of 2,500 rooms at all the smaller hotels and motels in AC and Absecon.
So let’s call it 20,000 hotel rooms in the immediate area.
In the absence of better data to use I apply 80% occupancy rate from the casino-hotels to all the properties. And a personal guess of 2.2 occupants per room (there a lot of kids in the summer and a lot of young adults who put multiple people in a room). 20,000 rooms x 2.2 occupants x 365 = 16 million x 80% = ~13 million
A lot of visitors come by car or bus for a day to the casinos. And there are a lot of people from surrounding towns who pop over for a few hours just to just to shop, see a show or hit the beach. From personal conversations with visitors and friends it is not a stretch to think that 1/3rd of the visitors on average are in for the day or a few hours. So that could be 8 million.
13 million + 8 million = 21 million. Close enough not to challenge the “official estimates”.
I’ve seen the figure of 27 million publicized but I discounted that by 2 million. The group that put together the 27 million estimate uses tolls collected on the AC Expressway as part of its calculations. That would necessarily include workers commuting in.
Also, the official estimate was 24 million in 2019. But that was a low year and 27 million is still their number for a typical year.
All in all I think the figure of at least 25 million that I put out there passes the sanity test.
According to DGE reporting the casino-hotels have 15,102 rooms. See page 5
Full-year occupancy rates at the casino-hotels is usually reported to be around 80%.
Showboat as 1,331 rooms (I don’t know if both towers are open year-round), Sheraton 502, Claridge 400, Wyndham 296 = 2,529
It’s just my own guess but there must be a MINIMUM of 2,500 rooms at all the smaller hotels and motels in AC and Absecon.
So let’s call it 20,000 hotel rooms in the immediate area.
In the absence of better data to use I apply 80% occupancy rate from the casino-hotels to all the properties. And a personal guess of 2.2 occupants per room (there a lot of kids in the summer and a lot of young adults who put multiple people in a room). 20,000 rooms x 2.2 occupants x 365 = 16 million x 80% = ~13 million
A lot of visitors come by car or bus for a day to the casinos. And there are a lot of people from surrounding towns who pop over for a few hours just to just to shop, see a show or hit the beach. From personal conversations with visitors and friends it is not a stretch to think that 1/3rd of the visitors on average are in for the day or a few hours. So that could be 8 million.
13 million + 8 million = 21 million. Close enough not to challenge the “official estimates”.
I’ve seen the figure of 27 million publicized but I discounted that by 2 million. The group that put together the 27 million estimate uses tolls collected on the AC Expressway as part of its calculations. That would necessarily include workers commuting in.
Also, the official estimate was 24 million in 2019. But that was a low year and 27 million is still their number for a typical year.
All in all I think the figure of at least 25 million that I put out there passes the sanity test.
The number of visitors doesn't change the fact that A.C. is a dump.
The last time I was there was for a State playoff game for boys basketball. Wife was the cheerleading coach so I went for the ride. The game was at the high school...which I don’t think is actually in the city?
That was a VERY nice facility and campus. Not at all what I expected when I heard the game was going to be at “Atlantic City High School.”
That was a VERY nice facility and campus. Not at all what I expected when I heard the game was going to be at “Atlantic City High School.”
IF the Casinos had given employee's special credit and the Town Fathers in AC had put up middle class housing then MAYBE the town could have expanded it's resident base from Section 8 to a mix of various income levels. But it was tax everyone and how much could I stick in my pocket from the 'suckers'.
The buses that used to come down with the seniors that gave you a free buffet ticket and 35 bucks in casino 'coins', I always thought was a good deal for some oldies bored with sitting on the porch in their rocking chairs in Brick to Manchester. Spend a couple of hours with people your own age, a free meal and some free $ time in the casinos.
BUT every casino employee I ever knew lived on the western side of the GSP in the multitude of new middle income housing built up and down the GSP within the 'commute' to AC Casinos.
The buses that used to come down with the seniors that gave you a free buffet ticket and 35 bucks in casino 'coins', I always thought was a good deal for some oldies bored with sitting on the porch in their rocking chairs in Brick to Manchester. Spend a couple of hours with people your own age, a free meal and some free $ time in the casinos.
BUT every casino employee I ever knew lived on the western side of the GSP in the multitude of new middle income housing built up and down the GSP within the 'commute' to AC Casinos.
It's technically within city limits, but kind of "out there". It's way nicer than my alma mater, Bowie High...
The old high school used to be next to "The monument", partially where Stockton's satellite campus is.
Obviously. A.C. is the only shore town where a dead body was found in a hotel box spring.
Yes it is. The most crime, most murders, most litter and bad schools.
It is not a matter of forgetting, Information like what you mentioned is purposely omitted to make
a point, (fake news)
If you’re going to continue to quote and troll my posts be a man and use your primary handle.
There‘s a horse running in the Kentucky Derby that might be of interest to you if you are into playing horses based on the name: Known Agenda.
No agenda here. I speak the truth. AC was great before low income housing. AC is now a dump. I want AC to go back to being a great town. YOUR plan is to expand failed policies. Liberals are trying to make great shore towns adopt the same failed policies used in AC. AC should go back to the successful policies and copy the successful towns.
AC should forget casinos. The empty ones should be converted to condos. Public housing should all be sold at market rate. The residents will have an opportunity to buy in. If they dont want to buy in then that is their loss.
“And yet they are, looking to a post-pandemic future when gamblers will be looking for the latest thing. They're investing hundreds of millions of dollars with those days in mind.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars in investments. Nearly every casino owner/operator is making investments. And millions of dollars more in investments are being made in non-casino properties.
They are already in too deep. Other casino owners are cutting their LOSSES and closing the casinos for a reason.
The upper class visitors are not investing. Average home in Avalon goes for about $2 million. What is the average home price in AC? 200k?
Your point does not even dispute anything I said. AC is still a dump. It is the worst shore town. It was one of the best shore towns before public housing. Casinos have not improved AC.
This is great news.
I have big hopes for AC and know millions of proud New Jerseyans that do.
Don't listen to paid drivel and sock puppet handles.
Other towns are already great and don't need to waste hundreds of millions.
Ps. A lot of that cash is coming from the taxpayers. Blatstein is getting taxpayer cash.
Sure it is. Government from top to bottom is in much better hands today, so sounds good to me.
When has gov spending improved A.C.? It made A.C. worse. Crime is up and schools are down.
Government spending is up but AC is down.
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The school is actually quite nice One of the few things the casino revenue actually helped improve
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