As great as 2005 was, 2006 may be even a more important and historical year for Atlantic City. Sure, 2005 brought us the House of Blues complex, four new steakhouses, Nikki Beach and big-name headliners, but 2006 will usher in two major casino expansions, the addition of a revolutionary retail and entertainment complex, and renovations and additions to many other properties.
[Pointing to the Pier]
An all-star cast of restaurants, retail stores and entertainment options will comprise the $175 million, 320,000-square-foot Pier at Caesars, which totally redefines and reconstructs the former Ocean One Mall through the vision of developer Sheldon Gordon.
Using his blueprints that have made the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas one of the top-grossing revenue retail centers in the country, the Pier at Caesars will undoubtedly attract visitors who never stepped foot in Atlantic City.
After numerous delays, Pier officials strongly believe that it will finally be ready for this summer's tourist season, although a firm date has not been announced.
Restaurants
With the addition of the Pier's nine new restaurants, Atlantic City will truly become a restaurant destination. Offering everything from casual to upscale dining, the Pier's culinary offerings will up the ante in Atlantic City.
• Perhaps the most touted restaurants in the Pier come from Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr, who will open the second location of his Asian fusion megahit Buddakan and the upscale cuisine of the Continental. Buddakan customers can expect to enjoy creative Asian food while sitting at onyx-topped communal tables in front of a 10-foot gold-leaf Buddha. At the Continental, foodies will relish the small-plate gourmet presentations as well as a bar offering classic cocktails made with care. Starr also has plans to open an upscale beach bar in the style of Nikki Beach.
• Regular visitors to Boston know nightlife maven Patrick Lyons' properties. Lyons will bring a lot of Beantown with him when he opens three of his establishments in the Pier. Sonsie, one of Newbury Street's trendiest cafes, will showcase an eclectic bistro menu and mouth-watering baked goods. The Dubliner Irish Bar and Restaurant will not only serve plenty of Guinness on tap, but will specialize in contemporary Irish food. And Game On! offers Pier visitors a sports bar on steroids, with pub fare, high-definition plasma televisions for all of the games, and a DJ spinning music to give the place a pulse rather than fan and announcer noise from the TVs.
• Jeffrey Chodorow, who is well known for his former NBC series The Restaurant, will bring two more of his acclaimed concepts to Atlantic City when he opens rumjungle and a joint venture with Todd English that has not been named yet.
Chodorow, who also opened the successful Red Square in the Tropicana's Quarter, will provide plenty of Vegas flair with rumjungle, which also has a location in Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay. Featuring a mix of tropical food, R&B music, hip-hop and a huge dance floor for late-night festivities, rumjungle is one of the most popular dance clubs in Las Vegas and should be the same in Atlantic City. Plus, the food is awesome.
The Chodorow-English collaboration will offer family-style Italian comfort food with a rustic theatrical interior. Offering everything from pizza to pasta, it will be a very accessible restaurant for all diners.
• Baltimore's Phillips Seafood Restaurant will bring its Maryland-style delicacies from the sea to Atlantic City, including its signature buttery lump crab cakes, broiled lobster tails and Alaskan king crab legs. There will even be a Boardwalk carry-out program. Phillips will also open Blowfish, a sushi bar, right across from its restaurant.
• There is word that another high-end restaurant will be added, along with some smaller, grab-and-go type eateries, but those have not been made official.
Shopping
The Pier will feature approximately 100 high-end retailers, complementing the Walk's outlet stores and cementing Atlantic City as not only a gaming and dining destination, but a shopping destination as well.
Although many of the retailers have not been announced, big names such as Tiffany & Co., Burberry, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Hugo Boss and Armani A/X have signed on, with many more to be announced shortly.
Extras
The Pier at Caesars strives to be much more than a mall, offering services and attractions that you won't find in most retail centers.
For starters, the Pier will feature the city's first wedding chapel, offering couples the chance to not only get hitched, but rent ocean-view banquet space for their reception.
The Pier will also provide a great facelift to the Boardwalk. Not only is the massive Pier's structure architecturally attractive, but Gordon signed a deal with Clear Channel Spectacolor to erect more than 70,000 square feet of illuminated billboards to make the Pier look like Times Square with trendy advertisements displayed on state-of-the-art equipment. Featuring LED screens, neon lights and modern graphics, there will be 17 billboard-style displays, plus a 50-foot tower for the Pier's biggest advertisers.
On top of all that, a water show featuring state-of-the-art sound will also draw spectators on a daily basis, much like the free attractions at many major casinos in Vegas.
[A Bigger Borgata]
With its unbelievable numbers and already impressive facilities, it seems like Borgata already owns Atlantic City. So what will happen when the powerhouse opens the first phase of a $560 million expansion this summer? Probably even more people will be checking Borgata out.
While the second phase features a new 45-story hotel, this summer's $200 million expansion will include more casino space, new restaurants, a new ultralounge and more retail space.
The 2,000-room hotel and casino market leader's executives are being pretty tight-lipped about what to expect this summer, but there are a few things that have been announced.
Restaurateurs Bobby Flay, Michael Mina and Wolfgang Puck will help Borgata finally meet its high demand for diners. When Borgata was conceived, not even its executives predicted the success they would have, and the existing food outlets simply aren't enough to meet demands on busy weekends.
Flay, Mina and Puck—all of whom have critically acclaimed restaurants in Las Vegas—will bring their celebrity and culinary touches to Atlantic City hoping for the same reception.
Bobby Flay Steak will complement Borgata's Old Homestead Steakhouse. Upscale like his Mesa Grill chain in Las Vegas and New York, Flay's creative dishes and knack for using out-of-the-ordinary ingredients should make Bobby Flay Steak different from the multitude of other steakhouses in the city.
Puck's restaurant will be the most casual of the new offerings and will most likely resemble his Spago restaurant at the Forum Shops in Vegas with a mid-priced menu and café-style food. Puck's "Express" restaurant, which offers even more casual and takeout fare, could also be at Borgata.
Mina's Seablue, which has another location in Vegas' MGM Grand, will feature fresh fish and shellfish from around the world flown in daily and prepared in open kitchens. The Vegas menu features family-style portions for sharing and a wood-fired grill. It will be interesting to see if the sea theme, with a tank featuring more than 1,000 fish, will be coming to Atlantic City, too.
Borgata also has plans to add the tentatively titled "The Cafeteria," a food-court-like area featuring Asian food from Panda Express and Hibachi-San, the popular West Coast burger chain Fat Burger, Ben & Jerry's, Philadelphia's Tony Luke's, the beverage stop Mini-bar, salads from Lettuce Head and New York's Villa Pizza. Billed as "Good food fast," The Cafeteria should definitely meet the casino's high demand for food.
There will also be some additional retail space, but Borgata officials wouldn't say what type of nor how many stores would be added in the expansion.
Of course, with any casino expansion, there is additional gaming. The expansion will feature 500 new slot machines and 36 table games. The poker room and racebook will be moved from the basement to the new addition, tripling the size of the simulcast area and expanding the poker room from 34 to 85 tables, making it the second-biggest poker room in the city.
The basement area now occupied by simulcasting and poker will be transformed into a players' club.
Finally, Borgata will debut a new ultralounge, complete with plush seating, VIP treatment and European bottle service. Modeled after Light at Bellagio in Las Vegas, the untitled Borgata ultralounge will also feature a dance floor, DJs and private areas.
[Harrah's Hopping]
Not to be outdone by its Marina neighbor, Harrah's also announced a $550 million expansion in an effort to update the casino and become more attractive for high-end customers.
The expansion will add a 964-room hotel tower including nearly 200 suites and super suites, increasing the hotel's capacity to approximately 2,600 rooms, putting it very close to Borgata's 2,800 rooms once that casino's expansion is finished sometime in 2007.
Harrah's hopes to open the retail and entertainment phase of the new expansion by the end of 2006. That space will include more than 172,000 square feet of space, including a new nightclub, as-yet-unnamed retail stores and a 500-seat coffee shop.
Harrah's successful buffet, the Fantasea Reef, will be moved in current banquet room space on the upper level near Polistina's Italian Restaurant and The Steakhouse. Continuing the popular underwater theme, the new buffet will be bigger and better, receiving upgrades in décor, quantity and quality of food and amenities, plus an expansion to 650 seats.
The current Fantasea Reef space will then be occupied by more than 400 slot machines and 20 tables games.
Harrah's officials are keeping quiet about the details, particularly the entertainment portion of the expansion. The complete project should be done by summer 2008.
[Trump To Be Terrific]
Although 2005 saw Donald Trump lose a little control over his casino empire, the new leaders of the Trump properties have big plans for their three casinos.
The biggest plans the company is talking about are the ones at Trump Plaza, the New York-style casino right at the base of the Atlantic City Expressway.
A chronic underachieving casino, the Plaza is undergoing massive renovations to update the aged look in hopes of becoming a stronger competitor for high-level gamers.
The main casino floor is currently undergoing a $22 million facelift. When it's all done by the end of the first quarter, the Plaza will feature all new carpeting, wood accents, dramatic lighting to accent the casino's already fabulous marble, more accessible walkways, 60 plasma screens above the slot machines, and intricate tile work near the entrance from self parking.
The casino also spent more than $12 million renovating its rooms recently, and will spend from $300,000 to $500,000 for each of the approximately 25 super suites in the casino in 2006.
The casino's café, the New Yorker, will also undergo a $4 million renovation that will gut the entire operation. When it reopens with a new theme, the restaurant will also feature an updated menu, new furniture, ceilings, lighting and flooring.
There are also tentative plans to build a casino-floor bar near the self-park entrance, as well as updating its theater.
That's on top of the $2 million the Plaza spent on the Liquid Bar, a trendy hot spot located near the Boardwalk entrance that actually opens up to the Boardwalk during the summer.
It is also expected Trump will lay down some specific plans for the expansion of the Plaza in the adjacent block that housed Sabatini's Restaurant.
Major plans are also sketched out for the Taj Mahal, including a new hotel tower, new restaurants, a casino-floor bar, a makeover of the Etess Arena, and some improvements to general areas, especially in the long hallway near the self-park garage. The popular dance club, Casbah, recently received a makeover including elevated VIP seating as well as cosmetic changes.
Trump Marina already received some eye-catching improvements to its casino floor, and more improvements are scheduled for 2006. However, no details were available at press time.
[Walking The Walk]
Atlantic City's popular outlets, the Walk, will add new restaurants and entertainment venues to its already impressive roster.
Once again, the Baltimore-based Cordish Co., the project's developer, was not ready to discuss specifics, but stated that by 2006, the Walk would add another 350,000 square feet of stores, restaurants, offices, entertainment, offices and residences. The $155 million expansion will more than double the Walk's size.
The 2006 expansion will spread across five city blocks, including the other side of the Atlantic City Expressway.
Although tenants have not been announced, a Ruby Tuesday restaurant and J. Jill clothing store are expected to open soon.
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