The Death and Life of Atlantic City

When you think of most cities, they're there

because at one point they started out as a port

or as a mining town.

There was some reason for them to exist where they were.

Atlantic City is one of the first cities

in the United States where they just

imagined there being a place there

for the purpose of building a place there.

Let's just build it and they will come.

What they had in mind was a place where

people could get away from industrial Philadelphia,

go to the beach, clean air, just to get out of the city.

These aristocrats wanted a place that you

would be able to come and let your hair down

and engage in all of these guilty pleasures.

They would catch a train down

and spend a day in Atlantic City.

[Old-Time Narrator] Many visitors get sand

in their shoes, as the saying goes, and

become permanent citizens of this vacation capital.

(sophisticated jazz)

I'm Marty Wood, I'm the owner of Wood's Pawnbrokers.

I was born here.

It's a long time to be in Atlantic City.

Years ago a guy brought in a left-arm prosthesis,

laid it on the counter, I said, Gee,

we're looking for a right arm.

From 1854 probably up to around the '50s,

Atlantic City was the number-one domestic

tourist destination in the country.

Any building in Atlantic City, you look at it,

it's somebody had a big idea, a dream,

if we build this huge monstrosity,

people are gonna come, they're gonna spend

a lot of money, and we're all gonna get rich.

The Revel was the biggest private construction project

in the history of New Jersey.

Nothing else was as expensive as the Revel.

We have a resort destination,

we have a neighborhood,

we have a re-anchoring of our town,

and that to me is the celebration of Revel.

My name is Michael Hauke, I'm the owner of Tony Boloney's.

My father, who owned property here, said,

Listen, you should get into real estate.

And this property came up, and he just kept

pushing me and pushing me, like,

Listen, this is something that will be good.

They're building Revel two blocks away.

It was gonna be a ultra-luxury resort,

We're not just a casino, we're not gonna

make our money off gaming, which I think,

ultimately, from anyone you speak to,

led to their demise.

30 years ago, when casinos first opened

in Atlantic City, we were the only show

on the East Coast.

Things changed, the next thing you know

casinos opened in Connecticut

and Pennsylvania,

of course Delaware,

they have siphoned away business from Atlantic City.

There used to be hundreds of buses come in here every day.

Now, maybe there's 50 buses a day, I don't know.

Revel was going to transform Atlantic City.

Well that didn't happen.

The people didn't come.

Atlantic City's Revel casino opened just two years ago

and cost $2.4 billion to build.

Tonight it's closing its doors

in what may be the city's most spectacular failure.

It didn't last very long.

So now you had at the end of the boardwalk,

this gleaming tribute to failure,

and in a way,

that sort of encapsulates the story of Atlantic City.

So along comes this guy, Glenn Straub, this

investor from Florida, buys it for pennies on the dollar.

His idea at the outset was to convert this giant

hotel and casino into what he was calling

a tower of geniuses.

(Scoffing) Tower of geniuses

Fill it with scientists and

solve the problems of the world.

Astronauts are gonna live over at Revel, whatever,

the deal never went through.

It never happened.

So what are you gonna do?

Tear it down and sell off the parts?

The idea of bulldozing a $2.5 billion building

two or three years after it's built,

it's hard to fathom, but it may be the best thing

for that end of town.

A hundred calls a day from random people,

Where are you guys located?

Well, where are you?

We're on the boardwalk by Caesar's.

Walk down all the way past the Showboat,

which is closed, and the Revel, which is closed,

past the gates and makeshift barrier on the boardwalk,

hop that, walk another block, then walk down a block,

into an empty field.

That's where we are.

Think about the amount of people that

actually take you up on that offer.

Nothing has ever worked here,

other than what's here already.

The beach, and the boardwalk.

If you close your eyes, and you open them

and you face the beach and the boardwalk

and you hear the birds and you smell the saltwater air

and other things, you could be anywhere.

It just so happens that you're in apocalyptic

Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Well I couldn't describe Atlantic City in three words,

but I will give you one phrase,

and that is we get knocked down, but we get back up.

Three words, God bless America.