Senate pushes for boutique casinos in New Jersey

A state Senate committee on Monday advanced a bill to authorize two “boutique” casinos for the resort town that will be much smaller than the existing gaming venues.

Proposed bill also removes a requirement from the original 2011 boutique facilities law that the casinos must be built from scratch. The new bill would permit existing buildings to be converted into small casinos.

Thus far, no one has taken advantage of the law written when Hard Rock expressed interest in doing a rock ‘n’ roll-themed boutique casino in Atlantic City that it ultimately abandoned. The company is now partnering with the Meadowlands Racetrack to build a casino at the East Rutherford sports complex if the ongoing push to expand casino gambling to northern New Jersey is approved.

Curtis Bashaw, the owner of the Chelsea, a 330-room boutique hotel in Atlantic City, is also interested in adding gambling. He did not speak at Monday’s hearing and did not respond to requests for comment afterward.

The boutique casino plan is seen as a way to entice developers into the market at a much lower price than the US$1.5bn to US$2bn the city’s higher-end casinos cost to build. The most successful of the city’s existing eight casinos has more than 2,000 rooms.

These changes were first proposed in late 2014, after four of the city’s 12 casinos had shut down. They also included scrapping a requirement that one of the new smaller hotels eventually expands to 500 rooms.

The move is one of many the state is working on in an effort to jump-start Atlantic City’s struggling casino market. Also in the mix are Internet gambling and a push to legalize sports betting. Atlantic City’s casino revenue has fallen from a high of US$5.2bn in 2006 to $2.56bn last year.