Available casino jobs don’t solve problems

Atlantic City’s social problems remain after 30 years of gambling.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — The ads were titled “Help Yourself, Help Atlantic City, Help New Jersey,” and they made a series of promises, if only voters would pull the “yes” lever to legalize casino gambling.

Having casinos in Atlantic City would “balance taxes, create jobs, boost the economy, and cut down on street crime,” the advertisements assured.

Thirty years after singer Steve Lawrence tossed the first dice onto a green felt table to kick off legalized gambling on Memorial Day 1978, there is no question that casinos have transformed Atlantic City into a $5 billion-a-year powerhouse.

But while most of those promises were kept, many of the problems the gambling halls and their billions were intended to address remain.

Casinos created tens of thousands of jobs, a flood of money for state coffers, and put New Jersey on the national map for vacation and gambling junkets. But they also created a sharper divide between the haves and have-nots. Before voters approved casino gambling in 1976, Atlantic City was a poor city struggling with crime, drugs and lack of jobs. Today it has the casinos, but the other problems persist.

“I feel sorry for the people that have been here all their lives and went through 1976, thinking there would be change,” said Merceda Gooding, a 40-year-old Atlantic City resident. “It saddens me to see that. In 1976, they said they were going to do all this stuff to help the needs of the Atlantic City residents, and they’ve fallen short a lot. We don’t even have a grocery store here.”

Gooding is completing her college degree in business administration and human resources. She wants a white-collar job at a casino but has found the work available to be much less attractive.

“I wouldn’t have a problem getting a job at a casino as long as it’s a maid job or washing the tables,” she said.

Tom Carver, executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, said casinos delivered on their economic promises but were never supposed to be saviors.

“Casinos are not government,” he said. “Casinos are not schools. Casinos are not anything other than [things that] provide jobs and public money, and they did that galore.”

After the 1976 vote, money flowed, and the city’s skyline grew. Everyone from Donald Trump to Steve Wynn to Merv Griffin wanted a piece of the action.

But just two blocks away from the casinos was a different Atlantic City: a poor population living in substandard housing, feeling cut off and alienated from the glittering wealth just beyond their grasp.

Sheila Thomas, 60, a lifelong resident and former casino cashier supervisor, said the casino boom has passed the average Atlantic City resident by.

“We’re the ones who put up with the drugs and the gunshots and the street crime out here every night,” she said. “I’ve worked here, I’ve paid taxes here, and I helped make this town. Now I feel like they want me to leave.”

Tony Rodio, president of Resorts Atlantic City and the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort, said Las Vegas also has neighborhoods that haven’t prospered with the casinos. And he noted that more than 40,000 people have jobs because of Atlantic City’s gambling halls.

“There’s only so much the casino industry can do,” he said. “I don’t think there was a promise that they were going to be able to eradicate poverty and redevelop every single square foot of Atlantic City. But in the grand scheme of things, the casinos have delivered on the promises to Atlantic City that were made 30 years ago.”