Atlantic City is not only for gamblers looking to while away the day and night at the gaming tables or slot machines.
It also offers some of the most beautiful beaches in the world as a fun and serene escape catering to families who want to enjoy the sun, sand, and surf. Kids are on the beach building sandcastles, not joining daddy at the craps table. To build sandcastles you need—well, sand–something that seems to be in increasingly short supply in Atlantic City. Normally known for its abundant fine white sand, this year the beach is feeling thin and hard as tons of it have been washed away.
This past winter has been a particularly rough one as weeks of storms have badly eroded beaches in the northern section of town, leaving little if any sand on which to play during all but the lowest tides, and casinos are clamoring for a much-needed top up before the crucial summer season starts.
Executives with the three northernmost casinos: the Ocean Casino Resort, Resorts and Hard Rock, are pressing the federal and state governments to expedite a beach replenishment project that was supposed to have been done last year.
Unfortunately, however, even under the current best-case scenario, new sand won’t be hitting the beaches until late summer, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that oversees such projects.
And that has the casinos concerned about not having a crucial element of their tourism appeal. Atlantic City has top-notch restaurants serving up everything from fresh seafood to gourmet burgers, concerts that bring in big names from all over, and a fabulous beach. It’s what sets it apart from other gambling meccas in the Northeast, principally, Philadelphia and Connecticut with its mega casinos, Foxwood’s and Mohegan Sun. Without the beach, Atlantic City could lose a significant swathe of the summer tourist trade.
