Hurricane Sandy’s economic toll still felt by Atlantic City casinos
December 11, 2012
The
12 casinos that call Atlantic City home suffered surprisingly little physical
damage from Hurricane Sandy, the late-October “superstorm” that impacted
coastal regions from the Carolinas to Massachusetts, and was particularly
destructive to oceanfront areas in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.
“Damage to the casino
properties was nothing major; you had minor things and debris,” Tony Rodio, CEO
of the Tropicana Resort Hotel and president of the Casino Association of New
Jersey, told the Philadelphia
Inquirer. “Atlantic City,
all things considered, fared fairly well when put in context of the communities
that were really hit that are north and south of us.”
“We had no real damage at
all; I don’t know how we didn’t, but we didn’t,” Don Marrandino, eastern
division president of Caesars Entertainment, which owns four Atlantic City
casinos, told the Associated
Press.
Indeed, most Atlantic City
casinos reopened roughly five days after the storm, when New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie lifted a state of emergency and evacuation order that had been
in place from October 28 to November 2.
“The
speed with which our partners were able to prepare to reopen their doors is a
testament to the resilience of our state, and our nation in the face of a
disaster of this scale,” Liza Cartmell, president of the Atlantic City
Alliance, said in a prepared statement.
Far
more damaging than the actual inclement weather to the Atlantic City casino
marketplace is the ongoing loss of business as the region slowly recovers from
the storm. Monetary figures released by The New Jersey Division of Gaming
Enforcement showed the city’s casinos generated a combined $209.4 million in
revenue for October 2012, a 20 percent decline compared to the $261.4 million
produced during the same time period last year.
“I actually thought it
would be worse when you consider the magnitude of the closure,” Rodio said.
“We’ll have to watch November and December to see how long it takes for us to
get back to normal.”
Part of the reason for the
drastic slowdown in business is the mistaken believe that the Boardwalk that
fronts the casino was totally destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. In fact, only a
small previously closed section of the Boardwalk was washed away by the strong
tidal surge generated by the storm, according to local reports. Still, new
research data from a national poll conducted by New Jersey-based Russell
Research shows that 41 percent of the American public believes the Atlantic
City Boardwalk is destroyed.
To
combat this misperception, The Atlantic City Alliance started a ad campaign to
correct the record continues with a full-page print advertisement in the New York Times featuring the Boardwalk with supplemental digital
and email advertising reaching one million people.
More problematic for the
New Jersey casinos is the regional impact of Hurricane Sandy, and how soon
residents in hard hit locales are willing to once again visit Atlantic City.
“I
think we have to be concerned about what the impact is going to be the next 30
to 60 days, what it will take for the to recover from the storm,” Steve Norton,
a gaming industry analyst who heads the consulting firm Norton Gaming LLC, told
the Philadelphia Daily News. “[Sandy] will definitely have an impact beyond
the days the casinos were actually closed.”
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