Recapturing a spirit of innovation: Doubling down on Atlantic City’s Meetings and Events Business.

By Sarah Grady, Assistant Director, Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming Hospitality & Tourism

Atlantic City was once referred to as the "World's Playground," a place to escape the everyday and indulge. Even back then, it wasn’t just about gaming or even just about the beach and Boardwalk. The city was a place for innovation, the place to be to experience the new, the novel and the cutting edge.

The Steel Pier, the “Showplace of the Nation,” survived fires and storms in the early 20^th century to bring live performances, sporting events and trade exhibitions to the shore, including appearances from Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, John Phillip Sousa, The Rolling Stones and The Supremes. One of the more famous exhibitions from Atlantic City’s history, Dr. Martin A Couney’s infant incubator exhibit, which had a permanent home on the Boardwalk from 1902-1943, contributed to the field of neonatology and advanced innovative treatments that saved the lives of premature infants at a time when the use of neonatal incubators was not widespread. The Atlantic City exhibit existed alongside installations at Coney Island's Luna Park, New York City's World Fair, the Omaha Trans-Mississippi Exposition, the Buffalo Exposition and the Chicago World's Fair, all spaces celebrating the excitement of new frontiers (The Atlantic City Experience).  

As stakeholders look for a way forward for Atlantic City, inspiration can be taken from some (certainly not all!) of the city’s past. In particular, the city’s meetings and events business, in some ways the successor of the city’s historic exhibition piers, are recapturing the spirit of novelty and innovation that permeated the city’s past.

The state-owned Atlantic City Convention Center with its 500,000 square feet of contiguous flexible event space, is just one asset in a citywide inventory of over 1.8 million square-feet of meeting and event space. In recent years, venues like the Historic Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall, Ocean’s Ovation Hall and Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City’s Mark G. Etess Arena have hosted numerous headliners – Chicago, Keith Urban, Diana Ross, Phish, Smokey Robinson, Demi Lovato, Mariah Carey, Dave Chappelle, Tim McGraw and Adam Sandler to name a few.

The Convention Center itself regularly hosts the New Jersey League of Municipalities and New Jersey Education Association, as well as The Pool & Spa Show, Atlantic City Boat Show and, in 2022 the 113th National Convention of the NAACP.

The Atlantic City Sports Commission, an extension of Visit Atlantic City and the Atlantic City Convention Center, has recently hosted numerous youth and adult sporting events including the NEAAU Atlantic City Open (Youth Volleyball), NJSIAA Wrestling State Championships (high school), Metro Conference Men's and Women's Basketball Championships (college), and the Atlantic City Marathon (the third oldest continuously running marathon in the United States).

And all of this is potentially under threat as state legislators consider dedicating limited state resources to construct a conventions facility in ther Meadowlands, New Jersey, that would directly compete with and potentially divert resources away from Atlantic City. With other market forces at play (suppressed demand from international visitors, national economic pressures, regional gaming competition etc.) this is not another challenge that Atlantic City needs to take on in its efforts to fully realize its potential as a world-class resort destination.

Because Atlantic City’s meetings and events business does not exist in isolation. It exists in a synergistic relationship with the gaming, hospitality and tourism industries of the region producing economic activity greater than the sum of the individual parts. The year-round meetings business tempers the seasonality of tourism business in the resort and leverages the assets of the city’s nine gaming hotels to create immersive and memorable events.

A fully supported Convention Center contributes to that synergy in many and varied ways, just as an under-supported facility could weigh on the city as a whole. It is therefore critical that decision makers consider everything there is to lose from counting Atlantic City out and everything there is to gain from doubling down on the existing assets in the city. With concerted effort from state lawmakers, community leaders and all stakeholders, Atlantic City can continue to recapture the spirit of innovation and usher in a new era of excellence in the resort.