New Jersey’s governor has a plan to help America’s playground

FOR centuries Atlantic City has been a holiday spot. The Lenni-Lenape Indians spent their summer months there, though they called it “Absegami”. In 1850 Jonathan Pitney, a local doctor, saw the then undeveloped island as a “city by the sea”, a health resort where people could escape the dirty towns. Within a few years a train full of Atlantic City’s first spa guests arrived. A century and a half later that city by the sea boasts 11 casinos and the famous Boardwalk; but its fortunes have declined of late. People think of it as unsafe and unclean. Its jobless rate, at 12%, is higher than the national rate of 9.5%. A reported 24% of its housing units are empty. The city’s poverty rate is slightly higher than it was in 1978, when the first casino opened.

Gambling, long considered recession-resistant, was one of the first industries to be affected by the latest recession. It may also, according to Moody’s, a ratings agency, be one of the last to recover. On August 18th the Casino Control Commission announced that Atlantic City’s casinos had reported a 23% decline in operating profits during the second quarter of 2010. Net revenues were down by 7%. ...