Resorts Casino Hotel’s instant positive impact created a wave of continued development. My compliments to Mark (Giannantonio) and his wonderful team,” said Cantone. “Resorts showed the way for all casinos to follow… And they reminded everyone how to reinvent themselves when Jimmy Buffett performed on the beach to thousands to open Margaritaville.

you are the leader that introduced gaming to a world that only existed in Las Vegas,” said Cantone. Tom Cantone, Corporate President of Sports & Entertainment for Mohegan Sun Gaming, International shared: I am very optimistic about the coming years,” concluded Perskie. “The neighborhood associations, the Chamber of Commerce, the Casino Association, the Boardwalk Merchants, CRDA, developers such as AC DEVCO, Stockton University, are all working closely with Mayor Small and his staff and with the Lieutenant Governor to create our future. “The good news is that it seems that all of the separate interests are now in a position to work together to build our future,” said Perskie.

“We’ve come a very long way since 1978, but we’ve still got a long way to go to create the City that we dreamed about,” said Perskie. Perskie drew from his experiences of the past, present, while also looking towards the future. We reached out to Perskie for his reflections of 43 years ago today. Standing directly next to Steve Lawrence was former New Jersey State Senator Steve Perskie. Legendary singer Steve Lawrence (ceremonially) rolled the dice at a craps table and Atlantic City had officially entered a golden era of economic prosperity. There was initially 33,735 square feet of gaming space at Resorts Casino Hotel.

People lined up outside and waited hours for their chance to play the 84 table games and 893 slot machines. 'For those not willing to follow that advice, the casino is now open,” said Governor Byrne.īyrne and the New Jersey state legislature were very concerned at the time about organized crime infiltrating the Atlantic City casinos prompting Byrne to publicly say for them “to keep the hell out.” Byrne cut the ceremonial ribbon and said, “My father once told me never to bet on anything but Notre Dame and the Yankees” (also my two favorite teams). They opened the property as Resorts International Hotel and Casino.įormer New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne was on hand.

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