Atlantic City is hemorrhaging

It wasn't hard to see even back then: this place didn't have long.

Sure, it had elements of the old extravagance: that luminous cluster of casinos, filled with the most admirable characters that such a city could find, gathered around the gaming tables in unprecedented numbers to burn their money and ditch their morals. The lights never dimmed, the cash roared in, and inside those glass doors, life was grand.

But they were just islands of illusion in a turbulent town. A block or two inland and you'd feel the city's real pulse - and it was not something a bus tourist would be keen on. The true Atlantic City was a shattered, burnt-out husk of the place we read about in the history books as having the first boardwalk or finest taffy. The streets were dark and dangerous, and that boardwalk, littered with hustlers and hookers, pushers and pimps, attracted only the foulest that humanity could muster.

It was America's inequality addiction, laid out nice and neat for all to see: the glittering facades full of the Haves, who giggled drunkenly while they threw their money into the fire, and the cruel reality of the Have Nots, who scrounged and stole and scraped for their next meal or final fix.

That city was a loaded gun if I ever saw one.

It took longer than I thought - maybe 10 years or so. But when the voters of New York approved the idea of gaming tables in their state late last year, that trigger was pulled. Gambling was already legal in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and AC's competition, once non-existent, had become stifling.

But even though every casino that opened in another state was a little cut through which Atlantic City's lifeblood ran out, everyone knew that any resort so close to New York City would be a shotgun blast to the chest of a faltering patient.

The revenues tell the tale. Last year's were about half of the city's 2006 high of $5.2 billion. Three of the city's 12 casinos are going out of business already, and who knows if any more will follow.

Call it what you will. The term "casino saturation" seems to be the catchphrase now. But I think it's just capitalism catching up with a city it was once slanted to favor.

Of course, the city's fathers - the real ones, not the politicians - are just as guilty as anyone else. The casino lords and local bosses grew rich off the deals, but instead of seeing the writing on the wall, pulled the tried-and-true method of dodging reality by pushing their heads further into that ever-shrinking pile of greenbacks.

Governor Christie's five-year plan to revitalize the gambling district is sinking into the sandy soil, and every day it grows more and more clear that those golden Monopoly board streets have turned to coal.

If people in this state - or the state's administration - are serious about saving that city before it's too late, a new plan has to be moved forward that will make it into the destination it always should have been. The particulars will have to be worked out by someone who knows those things, and heavy-handed "convincing" of some parties down there may be needed. But if Atlantic City is to survive as anything but a ghetto-by-the-sea, it'll be necessary.

It must become a place that people want to go, just to say they've been there, a city that shows the best of New Jersey - what we can be - not an example of how easily we can flood our own mines.

If it doesn't, there will be consequences. And we'll be left with an oceanfront graveyard, its dark buildings rising into the night like massive tombstones, memorials to the city that lost its biggest hand and never rolled the dice again.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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