Atlantic City's gambling halls are betting $10 billion (EUR 7.24 billion) on a plan to separate visitors from more of their money by remaking this seedy seaside resort into a hipper, hotter destination with top entertainers, glitzy rooms and swank restaurants run by famous chefs.
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Atlantic City's 11 casinos are in a frenzy of expansion and construction to compete with Las Vegas and to fight off unexpectedly strong competition from slots parlors in neighboring states.
Almost every casino here is spending millions of dollars to either expand or renovate, or has just finished doing so.
The building boom here is adding thousands of new hotel rooms as casino owners aim to remake the resort as a continental destination instead of a place for bus-riding day trippers to linger for a few hours before hitting the buffet and going home.
One of the most conspicuous projects is the second tower of the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. Dubbed The Water Club, the $400 million (EUR 289.79 million) addition will include 800 new guest rooms, a two-story "spa in the sky," five swimming pools and other luxury amenities.
Borgata executives held a "topping off" ceremony Friday for the upper reaches of the 457-foot(139-meter)-tall tower, which will be one of the tallest buildings in Atlantic City when it is completed early next year.
"What we've seen since 2003 when we opened is that it's not merely gaming-centric any more," said Joseph Corbo, the Borgata's general counsel and president of the Casino Association of New Jersey. "It's the amenities everyone offers _ the restaurants, the spas, the nightlife, the entertainment. Just this weekend alone, we have Billy Joel at the Borgata, and Josh Groban at Boardwalk Hall.
"In the competitive environment we're in, we need to differentiate ourselves from those around us," Corbo said of the Atlantic City casinos. All told, the Borgata's owners, Boyd Gaming and MGM Mirage, have invested $1.7 billion (EUR 1.23 billion) here in just four years.
"It wasn't six months after we opened that we started planning a major expansion," Corbo said.
The spending spree comes amid what seems destined to be the first year that revenues will decline in Atlantic City since casino gambling began in 1978. Much of the decline is being blamed on competition from newly opened slots parlors in Pennsylvania, New York and Delaware.
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