Top Teams: Caesars gets ready for new Harrah's convention center in A.C.

ATLANTIC CITY - In an event seen as symbolic of Atlantic City's future, city and state officials, as well as the head of gambling giant Caesars Entertainment Inc., signed the final steel beam Wednesday to top Harrah's new $126 million conference center.

Caesars Entertainment chief executive officer Gary Loveman said the project, due for completion in August, reflected his company's continuing commitment to Atlantic City, even as four casinos - including Caesars' own Showboat - have closed, and a fifth teeters on the brink.

"This is really a test case for me and my competitors - that Atlantic City can have a multifaceted meetings and conventions business," Loveman said. "That we can offer an entire experience, a deeper hospitality experience."

City and state officials hope Atlantic City can remake itself as a convention destination and beach resort, but the latest Rutgers-Eagleton poll finds that New Jersey residents are not optimistic about the city's future.

Loveman, who flew from Las Vegas for the event, said that while a lot of work lies ahead to diversify Atlantic City's now-truncated gaming economy, Harrah's new Waterfront Conference Center - which the company says is the largest and most technologically advanced on the East Coast - helps lay a foundation for something better.

The Northeast Corridor hosts a $16 billion meetings and conventions business, he said, but Atlantic City captures only 1 percent of that.

"There's no reason with Atlantic City's proximity to New York City, Washington, D.C., Philly, and Baltimore that we're only getting 1 percent," he said. "We can offer [conventioneers] a state-of-the-art facility that's fun and inexpensive.

"A meeting planner need not look further than Atlantic City."

Loveman said the new center could accommodate up to 5,000 delegates at a time. So far, he said, 25 contracts had been signed to use it.

Loveman, a former Harvard Business School professor, was joined by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester), Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian, and John Palmieri, executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.

"This is a great day for Atlantic City," Sweeney said. "Atlantic City has a phenomenal future. We've taken some hits, and we know that. . . . But Atlantic City hasn't seen its best days yet. Atlantic City's best days will be as a resort again."

A new poll out Wednesday offered a different interpretation.

With shrinking profits, casino closings, and about 8,000 layoffs this year, nearly two-thirds of New Jerseyans say Atlantic City's best days are behind it, according to the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll. Just 22 percent say the resort's best days are yet to come, and 15 percent are unsure.

Sixty-three percent of New Jerseyans say gambling has benefited only the casino-hotels, while 25 percent say it has been good for h residents and the casinos.

This perspective is not new. Just four years after the first casino opened in May 1978, a 1982 Eagleton Poll found just 30 percent of respondents thought gambling had benefited both casinos and city residents. Similar results were found in 1986 and 1999 polls.

This week's poll found that despite Atlantic City's aspirations to be known for more than casinos, state residents widely see gambling as its defining feature. While 25 percent view the city as a major convention and resort destination for all types of visitors, 63 percent believe it is known only for gambling. The result differs markedly from 1982, when nearly half the state thought Atlantic City was becoming a major resort, and from 1999, when 34 percent thought so.

Four Atlantic City casinos - Atlantic Club, Showboat, Revel, and Trump Plaza - have shuttered this year, and the market contraction may not be over.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., which owns the Trump Taj Mahal, said Wednesday that the casino would stay open at least through November. The company had threatened to close the casino Nov. 13 if billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who owns the casino's $286 million first lien debt, did not get major concessions from the casino workers' union and substantial state and city financial aid.

A bankruptcy judge ruled in Icahn's favor last Friday to nullify the current Taj union contract, stripping workers of company-paid health-care and pension plans. That same day he revised the amount that he sought in state aid to $175 million, mostly from economic grants. Icahn said he would also pump $100 million of his money into the casino.

Sweeney, who controls which Senate bills come up for a vote, said Wednesday that he would not support Icahn in any way.

"Icahn looks at employees as a liability, not as an asset," Sweeney said after the conference center event. "There is nothing I can, or will do, to support Mr. Icahn. I truly appreciate the other [casino] operators and how much they care" about their employees.

"I hope the [Taj Mahal] stays open, and I hope he recognizes that he made a mistake taking benefits from people - about $14 million from people," Sweeney said.

"He has a lifetime history of doing this to people, and then he tries to throw it on me," he said, referring to Icahn's claim that Sweeney was "selling out Atlantic City" by considering legislation to allow casinos in North Jersey.

Calls for comment from Icahn on Wednesday were not returned. He has said every aspect of the Taj's bankruptcy reorganization plan has to fall into place for the casino to stay open.

"With any consideration [of casinos in North Jersey], there has to be a net benefit to Atlantic City to create a destination," Sweeney said.

"We need to do that, and the project today [at Harrah's] is a perfect example to diversify the [city's] economy," he said.