Casino building jobs are plentiful

ATLANTIC CITY - Jeffrey Barton moved to the Shore from Redondo Beach, Calif., a year ago to cash in on an unprecedented building boom here.

"I'm here for one thing," said Barton, 44, who makes $31.97 an hour as a tile finisher. "The work."

There are plans over the next four years for $20 billion worth of casino, hotel, restaurant and retail construction and renovation projects, many of which began in 2003. And in a slowing national economy, all that development is attracting construction workers from around the country.

Since arriving from Southern California, Barton has had plenty to do. His skill was recently needed on the Water Club, the $400 million hotel tower going up at the Borgata. Since January, he has been remodeling hotel suites on the 51st floor of the Dennis Hotel at Bally's casino.

When the Bally's project winds down next month, Barton hopes to land either at the Trump Taj Mahal's new hotel tower or the $2.5 billion Revel casino-resort - one of four megacasinos proposed here.

"It's going to be nonstop for the next four or five years for sure," Barton said while recently grouting tiles as part of the Dennis Hotel's $20 million renovation that began last November.

Only Las Vegas, which currently has $35 billion worth of casino-related construction planned or under way, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, rivals what is happening at the Shore.

Atlantic City's manic pace of development is to fortify itself against new slots competition from neighboring states.

"The building is about the fact that they [casino operators] are under a lot of pressure for the convenience gambler from Pennsylvania and Delaware," said David G. Schwartz, author of Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling, and director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "The only real direction they can go is to have more destination gamblers, which means more hotel rooms and nongaming attractions."

And with the credit crunch and subprime mess drying up commercial and residential work in other states - including Illinois, Michigan and Florida - imported workers say Atlantic City is on everyone's radar.

"This is one of the major spots right now," said Bill Moore, 44, who moved to the Shore from Chicago last Thanksgiving to install giant marble and granite slabs on the Borgata's Water Club. When completed, the hotel tower will feature 800 rooms, a giant spa, five swimming pools, luxury lofts, upscale retail shops - and no place to gamble.

The construction has another effect. Real estate experts estimate Atlantic City will bring in 25,000 to 30,000 new casino workers over the next seven years, who will need housing.

Scott DiStefano, a sales associate with Weichert Realtor-Brigantine Realty, said he had received a half dozen such calls for rentals in the last two months.

He has seen a steady flow of out-of-state workers, such as Barton and Moore, relocating to Brigantine, which is experiencing a steady increase in property values because of its proximity to the casinos.

Mary Lou Ferry, owner of Farley & Ferry, which has three offices along the Shore, said she had an investor last month buy three condos in Ventnor to prepare as rentals for employees and contractors who will be working on the Revel casino.

"More investors are buying along the outskirts of Atlantic City, like Ventnor, to prepare for all the new workers," she said. "Rental activity has spiked through the roof."

But it's not just frontline workers who are calling real estate agents. Top managers and senior-level staff, many from Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida, are also moving to the Shore.

"Florida is kind of dead right now. Completely dead because of the real estate bust and no more condominiums being built," said Dario Borge, a superintendent on the Revel casino from Miami.

Borge, 62, began renting in Brigantine eight weeks ago. He flies home to Miami on weekends and returns to Brigantine on Sunday nights.

Borge's company, Berkel & Co. Contractors Inc., a foundation firm based in Kansas City, Mo., plans to bid on the foundation work for the new $5 billion MGM Grand Casino in the city's Marina District.

If Berkel wins that job, Borge said he would be in Atlantic City through at least 2012.

The competition for workers like Borge, according to casino operators and union leaders, is fierce, and they have had to cast their net further out. Three hotel towers at Harrah's Marina, the Borgata, and the Taj Mahal are going up concurrently. Harrah's Waterfront Tower is scheduled to debut March 6, with the other two in the summer.

"When you have three big projects happening at the same time, it means the number of tradespeople coming from outside the jurisdiction is greater," said Tom Ballance, senior vice president of development for Boyd Gaming Corp., which co-owns the Borgata.

Ed Bardes, from Penndel in Bucks County, was a pump operator on the Revel project for three months before getting laid off two weeks ago when that work was complete. He is currently on a union call list for his next job - most likely the site for the $1.5 billion Pinnacle casino, where the former Sands Hotel Casino used to sit, or the MGM parcel in the Marina - both needing to be cleared by heavy equipment.

"There's work for the next 10 years easily," said Bardes, 18, a recent high school graduate who entered an apprenticeship program with Local 825 - the operators' union in New Jersey - because of the demand.

More than seven dozen giant cranes, tractors, excavators, and other heavy machinery are at work seven days a week setting foundation for two hotel towers, a podium and garage for the Revel casino next to Showboat on the Boardwalk.

"What was once a barren, unproductive property will be turned into a fantastic facility," boasted Bob Anderson, executive vice president of development for Revel Entertainment Group L.L.C., which is behind the huge casino scheduled to open in the summer of 2010.

Construction of the gambling palace will require upward of 3,000 workers that run the gamut from electricians to tile setters, carpenters and more.

Although still more than a year away from breaking ground on the Pinnacle casino, its chief executive officer, Kim Townsend, already has made contact with the unions "to make sure they understand the scope of the project," she said. She estimated up to 2,000 workers will be needed for the Pinnacle project.

The $1 billion casino proposed for the southern end of the Boardwalk by developer Curtis Bashaw and former Caesars Entertainment Inc. chief executive Wallace Barr will also need thousands of workers.

Union leaders have set up hotlines for Atlantic City nationally through a job-referral system. Local union halls in states post the jobs and what they pay.

That is how Bob Voss, 53, a tile mechanic, learned about all the openings in Atlantic City while working in New York. Voss and his crew arrived in November 2006 to remodel the casino floor at Caesars. He said they had not stopped working since.

"They've embedded us here," he said. "We've got it real good down here."