Added: 11/01/2005 |
Casino city hotel. Atlantic City: A Brief HistoryLong before hotel and casino Atlantic City was founded (this event took place around 1850), the island where it would be developed, thick with woods and lined with dunes, was the summer home of the Lenni Lenape Indians an Algonquian-speaking people.
Atlantic City proximity to major population centers, coupled with a convenient, inexpensive train access, allowed thousands to flee the hot cities and enjoy summer pleasures at the cool seashore. The city grew rapidly and offered lodging, dining, entertainment and amusements for all ages, tastes and incomes. Attractions like the Boardwalk, amusement piers, floor shows and beauty pageants drew throngs of visitors, including many famous figures over the years.
From the 1880s to 1940s, Atlantic City was a major vacation resort. In the 1920s, it was considered a premier tryout town for theatrical productions, headed for Broadway and beyond. In the 1950s, as the air travel to vacation spots in Florida and the Caribbean became more widely available, the Atlantic City popularity as a resort destination began to decline. By the 1960s, the city was beset with the economic and social problems, common to many urban centers at the time. With the health of its economy, entirely dependent on the tourists who were now shunning the decaying resort, the city reached its nadir.
In 1976, the New Jersey residents approved legalization, allowing gambling in Atlantic City, with its first casino, Resorts International, opening its doors in 1978. However, the instant fame and economic boom that seemed so easy for Las Vegas remained elusive for this new East Coast gambling casino city hotel. With extensive restrictions, placed on the casinos, payoff amounts and the games themselves, Atlantic City did not have a wide-open, anything-goes atmosphere, associated with Las Vegas.
The Casino city hotels were legendary from the start. One of the first built - the six hundred room United States Hotel - was the country largest and the place, where Ulysses S. Grant vacationed during his second term as the President. By the turn of the century, the boardwalk was four miles long and lined with glittering casino city hotel resorts, catering to the east coast nouveau riche industrialist set.
A long anticipated second wave of development is now underway. The first of the new casino hotels Atlantic City to be built here since 1990, The Borgata, opened in 2003. The prospect of an increased competition in the gaming market in the casino city hotel, as well as the success of the five-year-old Atlantic City Convention Center, have been catalysts for the development of the new projects. Several casinos have embarked on major expansions of their hotel and retail space and a public-private partnership is building a sixty million dollar retail and entertainment complex, The Walk, in the center of the city. In all, over one point eight billion in new investments are planned or underway and, for the first time since casinos opened here, most of the new projects are devoted to broadening the appeal of the city beyond gambling. Offering visitors a wide range of attractions is considered a key to a successful future, a formula that surely proved itself in the past, when Atlantic City claimed the title "Queen of Resorts".
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