With past sojourns including seeing the Rolling Stones play Boardwalk Hall in 1989—that year the pinnacle of one boom era—to attending the grand opening of the luxurious non-gaming Water Club in 2008, the sister property to Borgata, and signature diversification product, I count myself among those with Atlantic City’s “sand in my shoes.”
In September, I came back to attend the ribbon-cutting and fireworks celebration for the new $125.8 million Harrah’s Atlantic City Waterfront Conference Center. Ahead of the ceremony, I spent a day traversing the Boardwalk. In part, it was a reunion with old friends, including Caesars, Bally’s, Miss America statue and stage, Steel Pier amusement park, and the monumental Boardwalk Hall.
It was also an opportunity to see new developments, such as Tropicana’s new outdoor LED signage and the dynamic new conference space and other improvements at Resorts Casino Hotel.
Chatting with locals and visitors on the Boardwalk, beach and inside the resorts confirmed that many others wear sandy shoes, too. The sobering note, of course, was the haunting abandonment of the Boardwalk’s north end, where the shuttered Revel and Showboat are stark reminders of pummeling setback, lost jobs and economic struggle.
At Harrah’s, however, it’s a bright new day. “Just like the fighter that won’t go down,” I said of Atlantic City to Michael Massari, Caesars’ senior vice president of national meetings and events, before the ribbon-cutting the following day. That resonated with the native Philadelphian, whose own story of resilience and resourcefulness in the meetings industry began as a teenager, when he filled in an open spot working an event and “never looked back.”
The new conference center should help set Atlantic City on a similar path.
Filling a marked void in the Northeast’s $16 billion meetings market, the 100,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility seamlessly integrates with all of Harrah’s assets. Capable of hosting 5,000 attendees under one roof, it creates the largest conference-hotel complex from Baltimore to Boston.
As noted at the ceremony, groups would have to go to Orlando, Dallas or Vegas to find the like. With a full-blown convention taking place inside as local and state officials joined Caesars’ executives in cutting the ribbon, the venue is already paying major-league dividends. In 2014, Harrah’s had 7,000 room nights booked for the 12 months ahead. With some 97 meetings already confirmed through 2019 at the new facility—including MPI’s World Education Congress in June 2016—room nights catapulted to 97,000 for the year ahead.
Sand in the shoes, anyone?
