Boardwalk Empire: Atlantic City’s iconic walkway still standing but can tourism weather the storm?

Legend has it that the famous Atlantic City salt water taffy was invented when candyman, David Bradley dubbed some recently storm-washed sweets as such after an 1883 sister of Hurricane Sandy’s had washed through his shop.

If the story is true, you could say that Atlantic City is busy trying to make salt water taffy out of Sandy.

The boardwalk, that iconic strip of wood, nails and dreams that runs along the island’s seafront is-as finally widely reported—still intact, despite naysayers leap to declare its greatly exaggerated demise.  (Absecon Inlet, however, was not so lucky. In the residential area just beyond the gleaming new resort, Revel, steel pegs stick up out of the Atlantic looking like a smile without teeth.)

Amazingly, a $13 million public art project dubbed "Artlantic" was also spared Sandy’s wrath.  The projects two first installations were opened to the media last Friday and TravelMole visited to take the pulse of AC’s recovery.

Funded and managed by the new non-profit, Atlantic City Alliance, a consortium of the city’s casinos, Artlantic’s two opened sites, one on a stretch of boardwalk itself and the other in a lot just behind it, had their virtual ribbon cut by curator Lance Fung, ACA’s president, Elizabeth Cartmell and Atlantic City’s Mayor, Lorenzo T. Langford.

Young dancers from the Atlantic City Ballet skipped across the public art canvas of Vertigo-like whorls in black and white that is supposed to mimic a hole through to the other side of the world at the boardwalk-side site while Fung wiped a tear from his eye and the major pulled his leather jacket closer against a whipping wind that had a tang of salt (Sandy?) still in it.

We asked Mayor Langford the obvious question: "What do you want the travel industry to know about Atlantic City and got the obvious answer: "That we are back and that the hurricane did not wipe out the boardwalk.  The casinos are open.  The shops and restaurants are open.  Atlantic City is open for business!"

Checking in at the new Revel resort that night to see for ourselves, we were surprised to see packed elevators, restaurants and shows.  "We had some cancellations obviously, right after the hurricane but our consumer as well as MICE bookings into January have no cancellations, " Revel’s new senior vice president of resort operations, Dirk Schavemaker, told us. 

Schavemaker toured us around the property whose pride of place at the edge of the island gives it an otherwordly quality far removed from the casinos that built the island’s gaming life. 

He says the Revel is eager to promote itself as a resort, not just a casino.  "The gaming is just one of our aspects," he says.  The Revel’s plush design-centric interiors, beach-side landscaping and inside/outside all weather pool seem to bear him out.

As we take the plunge in the heated water with the edge of the recently storm-tossed Atlantic just beyond, the giant golf ball poised on the edge of Revel’s roof lights up looking like a moon on another planet.

Atlantic City’s Empire may be shifting away from gaming as casinos like Steve Wynn’s recently announced Philly property open up to compete with her but no one has her long and poignant history, her grit and gumption—or that boardwalk.

Gretchen Kelly, Editor, TravelMole US/North America

 Atlantic City Ballet dancers at Artlantic, Atlantic City.  Photo: Craig Kellogg

Atlantic City Mayor Lorenzo T. Langford, Atlantic City Alliance president, Elizabeth Cartmell: Photo: Craig Kellogg