Atlantic City

HANOVER, Md. - Maryland Live, the largest and most successful of the state's three operating casinos, introduced dealer-staffed table games late last week, doubling its workforce seemingly overnight - and, some say, amping up its threat to gambling halls in Atlantic City and Delaware, plus at least one casino along I-95 in Pennsylvania. Craps player Nick Giron, 28, of Prince George County, said he'd be cutting back on his trips to Atlantic City. It's a 30-minute drive to Maryland Live vs. three hours to the Shore, where he typically plays craps at the Borgata.

George A. Hamid Jr., 94, a former owner of the Steel Pier in Atlantic City who with his family brought stars such as Frank Sinatra and the Beatles to the Jersey Shore, died of pulmonary failure Saturday, Feb. 23, at Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point. Mr. Hamid and his father, George Sr., operated the Steel Pier for 30 years, building a family-entertainment venue that blended circus acts, amusement-park rides, and concerts. Singers including Diana Ross, and unusual acts like the high-diving horse helped turn the pier into a main attraction for Atlantic City vacationers.

JOHN BOLARIS, radio badboy Howard Stern 's personal weatherman, will return to the airwaves Monday as a guest on "Lieberman Live at Five, "the new weekly program hosted by Jon Lieberman , a contributor to HLN and former "America's Most Wanted" investigative reporter. Local attorney Danny Cevallos was on the show this week. During his last appearance on Howard 101, Stern's Sirius XM channel, Bolaris proposed to his fiancee, Erica Smitheman .   A new Dawn at Fox 29 Longtime NBC 10 anchor/reporter Dawn Timmeney started Monday at Fox 29 as a freelance anchor/reporter.

As owner and chief executive of one of the nation's largest African American real estate development companies, R. Donahue "Don" Peebles has an impressive resumé. The multibillion-dollar portfolio of the Peebles Corp. includes luxury hotels, high-rise apartment buildings, and Class A office space in Washington, New York, Las Vegas, and Miami. Missing from that list: a casino, though he has made close-but-no-cigar efforts in Atlantic City and in Yonkers, N.Y. Which is why Peebles now has his sights firmly set on landing Philadelphia's second casino license, should it be allowed to stay in the city.

  Las Vegas has casinos in a desert. Atlantic City has casinos by the ocean. But the operators of Maryland's spectacularly successful casino about 15 miles south of Baltimore, Maryland Live, knew where they wanted to put theirs - in a shopping mall parking lot. So far, the move has paid off huge for both the casino and the adjacent Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, Md., as the two have combined to form arguably Maryland's single biggest-drawing destination....

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.

The women have arrived in Atlantic City for the Miss America Pageant, and they're hard at work. Miss Nevada, Stacie James, works out on a Nautilus machine; Miss Texas, Jo Thompson, gives an interview. They're all hoping to be named Miss America 1988 on Saturday night.

Miss American Pageant contestants Showing off in swimsuits in Atlantic City are (jumping) Susan Campbell, Miss North Dakota, and (from left) Katherine Ann Killen, Miss Minnesota; Nancy Humphries, Miss South Carolina; Cindy Hodgkins, Miss Illinois; and Patricia Brant, Miss Louisiana.

A national television audience, including viewers in localities where casino-gambling proposals are under consideration, got a grim look at the realities in Bill Moyers' CBS special Wednesday night: Big Gamble in Atlantic City. The tragic neglect of poor neighborhoods and inhabitants - hardly more than a dice-throw from the glitter of gaming halls - was accurate and perhaps even understated. There were some flaws in the show and it might have been better balanced, as Inquirer staff writer Lee Winfrey noted in a preview.

It's been 11 years now since mild-mannered former New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne, looking forward to the opening of Atlantic City's first casino 12 months later, put out his most virulent warning: "Organized crime, get your hands out of Atlantic City. Keep the hell out of our state. " By the time the Resorts International Hotel-Casino opened in 1978, many in New Jersey thought Atlantic City itself was Hell on Earth. The hotels were vacant, stores were being abandoned and the only thing moving more quickly than the pickpockets' fingers were the residents moving to the mainland.

In the Region Revel formally out of bankruptcy   Atlantic City's $2.4 billion Revel casino formally completed its financial restructuring and emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday. The reorganization plan, approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge and the New Jersey Casino Control Commission last week, eliminates about $1.2 billion of the casino's $1.5 billion debt through a debt-for-equity swap with its creditors. Revel has struggled since opening April 2, 2012, on the Boardwalk.

  Las Vegas has casinos in a desert. Atlantic City has casinos by the ocean. But the operators of Maryland's spectacularly successful casino about 15 miles south of Baltimore, Maryland Live, knew where they wanted to put theirs - in a shopping mall parking lot. So far, the move has paid off huge for both the casino and the adjacent Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, Md., as the two have combined to form arguably Maryland's single biggest-drawing destination....

The summer of 2013 pop-music schedule at the Jersey Shore is not quite so star-studded as last year. Atlantic City got a boost in 2012 with Beyoncé christening the then-brand-new Revel casino. Bader Field hosted Metallica's Orion music festival, which has moved on to Detroit, another town seeking revitalization via rock. Still, there will be plenty of marquee names playing down the Shore this season: Willie Nelson, Mary J. Blige, Ke$ha, Sting, Pitbull, B.B. King, Steely Dan, and, yes, Beyoncé are all coming to Atlantic City between now and Labor Day. Outside the orbit of the gambling town, there's noteworthy action, ranging from farther up the Garden State Parkway in Asbury Park, to Dover, Del., where the second Firefly Music Festival will set up shop in June on the way to the beaches of Delaware Bay. Things start to kick into gear Memorial Day weekend in Atlantic City, with Southside Johnny at the House of Blues on May 24 and Mary J. Blige at Caesars on May 25-26.

Before we do anything, let's address the giant elephant in the room - and we're not talking about Lucy of Margate. Nearly seven months ago, Sandy wrought devastation on the Jersey Shore like never before: The largest Atlantic storm on record created more than $30 billion in damage up and down the state's 127-mile coastline. More than 346,000 structures were damaged or destroyed when Sandy whipped across the state on Oct. 29. Some of the places that held memories so dear for many of us - beaches, homes, boardwalks, piers, shops, amusements, and restaurants - got washed away.

ATLANTIC CITY - Maybe you've noticed the new lighting on the Boardwalk. Or the dozens of "ambassadors" along it eager to answer questions about where to dine, shop, or just have fun. Most likely, you've seen the splashy "DO AC" ads on TV and billboards, or heard them on the radio. All are part of a bigger effort, along with the Atlantic City Tourism District that was created last year by Gov. Christie and the Legislature, to boost tourism and give the Queen of Resorts a makeover.

FOR A TOWN whose economy is built on luck, Atlantic City has seen plenty of the bad sort the past half-decade or so. First came casinos in eastern Pennsylvania, which brought full-scale gambling to millions who previously had to go to AyCee for their wagering action. Then the economy went south, wiping out discretionary income and capital to invest in new casino-hotels. Last fall, national news media erroneously spread the word that Superstorm Sandy had destroyed the world-famous boardwalk when, in fact, only a part of the Great Wooden Way - in the Inlet area away from the casino strip - was obliterated.

OF ALL THE images in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy last October, two seemed to linger - that of the unmoored roller coaster in Seaside Heights, and the one of the blown-away section of Boardwalk in Atlantic City. While the former was a real victim of the rain and high winds, the latter was, in many ways, just an unfortunate circumstance. The fallout from a perfect storm, if you will. "It caused a lot of misinformation about the damage from the storm and we have spent the last months trying to recover from that," said John Palmieri, executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, overseer of the biggest swath of Shore tourism: the Atlantic City casino district.

The man who created and then lost the vast Cherry Hill-based Commerce Bank network wrapped up his time on the witness stand in federal court in Camden Monday insisting that millions in compensation is being improperly withheld from him. "I want the jury," Vernon Hill testified, "to enforce the terms of my employment agreement. " In January 2008, six months after Hill was ousted as chairman, president, and chief executive at Commerce, he filed a lawsuit asking the bank, which by then had been acquired by TD Bank, to make good on his contract.

From the broken concrete of Deemer's Beach, you can see north up the Delaware River toward Philadelphia, south down Delaware Bay toward the Atlantic, and east over two miles of sun-tipped waves to hazy New Jersey to get a sense of what people lost when they turned their backs on the waterfront. "There was the tidal bathing pool, and the trolley, and the baseball ground, and the roller rink, and the dance hall, and the arcade, and the 1,500-foot-pier, and the place where the Wilson Line ships used to dock," said Harold West, owner of the property since 1987.

ATLANTIC CITY - Revel's new Pearl Lounge takes pains to show it is not just any slots parlor. With its canopy entrance, strung-pearl ceiling design, custom-print glass doors, and red oak floors, exclusivity is what it's all about. The 3,000-square-foot space just off the main gaming floor is intended as a complement to the casino's Ultra Lounge, a private space for high-end table players. "We needed this," George Mancuso, vice president of slot operations at Revel, said during a media tour Thursday on the eve of Pearl Lounge's opening.