Casino smoking and boosting in-person gambling are among challenges for Atlantic City in 2024

ATLANTIC CITY, NJ — After the confetti is swept away and the empty champagne bottles are recycled in Atlantic City, 2024 will bring numerous challenges and potential opportunities for the East Coast gambling resort.

The most burning issue for Atlantic City in the new year will likely be whether state lawmakers will approve a measure to ban smoking in its nine casinos.

High-profile anti-crime and pedestrian safety measures must demonstrate whether they actually work. A new $100 million indoor water park at the Showboat hotel is having its first summer season.

And the brick-and-mortar casinos will be watching closely to see if gamblers continue to embrace Internet gambling and sports betting more widely at the expense of doing it in person at the casinos.

Jane Bokunewicz, director of the Lloyd Levenson Institute at Stockton University, which studies Atlantic City's gambling and tourism market, believes there could be a return to more normal patterns in 2024 after pandemic-related disruptions.

“There are several reasons for optimism as we look ahead to 2024,” she said. “With recent stock market gains and a stabilization in inflation, consumer confidence could improve, leading to higher spending on travel and entertainment.”

She said recent pay increases for casino and hotel workers have alleviated some of the labor shortage.

And while Internet gambling continues to grow, non-gambling attractions such as the Showboat water park and the new Dave and Busters arcade, bar and restaurant should help draw new visitors to the resort, she said.

Mark Giannantonio, president of Resorts Casino and the Casino Association of New Jersey, said the industry is optimistic about Atlantic City's prospects for the new year “as we continue to transform Atlantic City into the leading regional gaming and tourism destination.”

This will mark the fourth year of an ongoing effort to close a loophole in the state's public smoking law, which specifically exempted casinos from smoke-free workplaces. Despite growing support — most of the state legislature has signed on as cosponsors, and New Jersey's governor is promising he will sign it — the bill has been bottled up in state committees without a vote.

An effort in December failed when some lawmakers veered away from an outright ban in favor of a compromise proposal favored by the casino industry, building enclosed smoking areas in which employees would work voluntarily. This approach is fiercely opposed by many casino workers who say nothing less than a complete ban can protect their health and give them the same workplace protections as other New Jersey workers.

Currently, smoking is allowed on 25% of the casino floor, but these areas are widely spread throughout the entire gambling area, resulting in passive smoking being present and detectable even in non-smoking areas.

“I am hopeful that we will be in a smoke-free environment in the near future,” said Nicole Vitola, a Borgata dealer and one of the leaders of the effort to ban smoking in the casinos. “It would have been a nice gift this year.”

There are even more questions for Atlantic City in 2024: Can the casinos return and exceed the levels of business they were doing before the COVID-19 pandemic, not just collectively, but on each individual property?

In terms of money won by personal gamblers – casinos' key business metric – just three casinos won more in the first eleven months of this year than in the same period in 2019, before the pandemic. They are the Borgata, Hard Rock and Ocean. Because money from internet gambling and sports betting must be shared with partners, including technology platforms, and it is not just for the casinos to keep, they consider the money won from gamblers on their own turf as their main business.

Will more gamblers risk their money online instead of traveling to Atlantic City to do so? Internet gambling generated nearly $1.75 billion in the first eleven months of this year and set a new monthly record in November.

Will the addition of more security cameras make the city safer?

And will a highly questionable project to reduce Atlantic Avenue – the main thoroughfare through the center of the city – from two lanes in each direction to one succeed in reducing pedestrian accidents without gridlocking the city during busy summer weekends or big concert nights to bring? ? Five casinos and a hospital are challenging the plan in court; a hearing is scheduled for January 26.

Atlantic City will implement a publicly funded beach nourishment project in 2024 to widen beaches that have eroded over the years. The loss of sand on the north side of town became so bad that in May the Ocean Casino paid $700,000 to have sand brought to what little was left of the beach in front of the casino.

Individual casinos plan to reinvest millions in their properties in the new year.

Ocean will renovate 506 hotel rooms before the summer at a cost of $25 million. Caesars will open its 85-room and suite Nobu Hotel project in one of the final phases of parent company Caesars Entertainment's $420 million investment in its three Atlantic City properties.

The Golden Nugget plans to complete the first phase of a $6 million renovation of 100 rooms and suites.

And 2024 could be the year major decisions are made on an ambitious proposal to redevelop the former Bader Field airport site into a $2.7 billion automotive-themed residential, entertainment and recreation project .

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