Throughout a rich and varied career in his hometown of Atlantic City, Howard Bacharach has seen the good and bad and been part of its ups and down for more than five decades. The executive director of the Atlantic City Hotel and Lodging Assn. remains committed to its success, is optimistic about its future, and can’t think of an area where he’d rather live. “Back in my younger days,” Bacharach recalled, “Atlantic City was a family resort. Once the casinos came (in the late 1970s), it became a gaming town. I don’t think we can ever go back to becoming a family resort because you can’t mix the two.”
Bacharach’s lifelong dedication to Atlantic City was honored earlier this year when he was awarded the first annual Tourism Leadership Award by the Greater Atlantic City Region Tourism Council for his “outstanding contribution to tourism in Atlantic County, N.J.”
Bacharach got his first job as a kid on the boardwalk’s famed Steel Pier and later become an operating partner in a consortium of businessmen who bought, refurbished and operated the amusement center in the mid 1970s.
During his early career, he also worked as an accountant auditing the books of many major South Jersey Shore hotels. When Caesars Atlantic City arrived, Bacharach took the job of comptroller and stayed for the next 19 years, retiring in 1997 as senior vice president of operations and administration.
The latest chapter in his career started in 2003 when he took the reins of Atlantic City’s century-old hotel association. He is credited for breathing new life into the organization, whose primary mission today is to provide college scholarships for students who want to pursue a career in the culinary/hospitality industry. A total of $28,000 has been distributed this year.
The association also holds monthly networking luncheons hosted by the casino hotels. “It gives people working in allied services the opportunity to rub elbows with each other, as well as with casino hotel executives,” Bacharach explained.
Bacharach’s background puts him in a unique position to consider where Atlantic City has been and assess its prospects for the future.
He recalled that Atlantic City’s fortunes began a serious decline at the time of the Democratic Party’s 1964 nominating convention. “The city took a negative knock when the TV cameras focused national attention on Atlantic City’s areas of decay. At the same time, transportation was changing. Air travel had become more affordable and people were looking to different locations for their vacations.”
“In fact,” he recalled, “things got so bad that we had a saying: ‘Last one off the island turn off the lights.’”
When the casino-hotels arrived, Bacharach said, they brought with them top-flight entertainment ven¬ues, a proliferation of great restaurants and a variety of new shops. More recently, the opening in 2003 of the swank Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa with its abundance of luxury amenities, “put us in a new direction. We have to expand on that.” He is also heartened by the arrival of the Chelsea, an upscale nongaming hotel on the boardwalk.
Bacharach conceded that current economic conditions and competition from surrounding states have brought a substantial decline in revenues to the casino hotels. “However,” he said, “from talking to casino executives I believe that the number of visitors has not declined. They are just not spending as much. That’s something being seen everywhere.” 
Bacharach believes that over the next few years several more casino-hotels will be constructed. “I think these new projects will help spur revitalization of Atlantic City” he said.
He noted that Revel Entertainment Group’s $2 billion-plus hotel is already under construction along the boardwalk. It will include two towers with approximately 1,900 rooms each, a 150,000-square-foot casino, 500,000 square feet of din¬ing, a 5,000-seat entertainment center and retail space.
MGM Mirage has proposed construction of a three-tower casino hotel on 72 acres near the Borgata. Meanwhile, Pinnacle Entertainment has put on hold its plans for a boardwalk casino-hotel on the site of the former Sands resort. “If not Pinnacle, someone will develop the site,” Bacharach predicted. And, he believes development of the 140 acre site at Bader Field and a casino hotel at Albany Avenue and the boardwalk will take place.
“The future looks bright,” Bacharach insists. “We just have to be patient. Right now, there are some tough issues on the table. When they are cured, Atlantic City will be cured.” 09/2008