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This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

7 - New Stylings: Finance, Retail and Challenges at the Turn of the Century

James R. Karmel
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Summary

After a few years of dizzying events, deals, projects, suits and counter-suits, the twentieth anniversary year of Resorts's 1978 opening provided a good opportunity for reflection. What had the legalization gamble wrought for the casino community in the two decades since gamblers literally swamped the one legal casino on the east coast? Early in 1998, the community had a chance to document the positive stories of the casino era when the National Gaming Impact Study Commission came to town. The NGIS commission included anti-gambling, ‘Focus on the Family’ leader James Dobson and Kay James, NGIS Chairperson and Dobson's associate on the ‘Focus on the Family’ board. To his chagrin, Dobson listened to numerous stories of the casinos’ positive impacts on various individuals: city officials, casino managers and rank-and-file employees. At one point during the hearings, Dobson, who probably based his perception of Atlantic City on the negative national publicity of the 1980s, became agitated because so much testimony was positive – something he found incredible. He attacked New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli for advocating for the casinos and complained that

We need more balance in the presentations. We make these site visits to hear the pros and cons. There must be problems that need to be addressed, but we're not hearing them. We need to hear from both sides.

As the Commission pulled out of town, Congressman Frank LoBiondo remarked that

The commission tried to dig up dirt. They made several visits to Atlantic City to find witnesses who they thought would spin this in a bad light. They weren't successful because that's not the story, [if it was] they would have found plenty of negatives.

Even if there were problems, in 1998 the commission could not easily point to Atlantic City as a community that needed some kind of federal regulation or taxation, as many who testified believed was the commission's goal.

Type
Chapter
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Gambling on the American Dream
Atlantic City and the Casino Era
 , pp. 175 - 214
Publisher: Pickering & Chatto
First published in: 2014

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