This morning's New York Times described a sort of foxes and henhouses turn to New Jersey's "Casino Reinvestment Development Authority."

The Authority is funded by casino revenue and is the only agency of its kind in the country. After the casinos pay the required 8% of gross to a state fund that uses the money for various social problems, they have the option of paying another 2.5% to that fund, or instead to contribute 1.25% to the RDA to be used for various redevelopment and anti-blight initiatives (e.g. "In its initial years, the authority focused largely on developing affordable multifamily housing in the dilapidated Inlet section of Atlantic City, spending an estimated $130 million on the effort.").

In recent years, claiming hotel room shortages and the need to compete with nearby states that have legalized gambling (hey!), the RDA has started shifting money back to the casino industry in the form of various improvement projects:

"The authority has subsidized construction of 13,000 hotel rooms in the city, 800 of them planned for a tower under construction at the Trump Taj Mahal. The agency spent $3.7 million for an IMAX theater to be built at the Tropicana Casino and Resort, where its grants also helped finance three floors of elegant stores, restaurants and a spa. An additional $26 million went to help build the House of Blues and to spruce up the facade at Showboat.

The agency has also pitched in for “parking lot beautification” at Showboat and road signs for Resorts and the Taj Mahal. And in 2005 it put $4.5 million toward express weekend train service between Manhattan and Atlantic City, to be provided by a partnership involving the Borgata, Caesars and Harrah’s, in conjunction with New Jersey Transit."

That's the cautionary tale part, I guess. More optimistically, the article made me think about the possibility of thinking beyond negotiated community benefit agreements towards ways that casino development (if the good fight ends as good fights often do) actually could be deployed in service of some larger, civically-derived, plan to develop the waterfront.

Jennifer