The Shore: Beauty and the Boardwalk
The Boardwalk Initiative is beginning in an Atlantic City that is showing promising signs of growing beyond its long-established cup-of-quarters-bussed-in-daytripper customer base. The mid-level retail district called the Walk has been successful enough to encourage Baltimore-based developer Cordish to plan a companion mixed-use development at the city’s gateway entrance. Tropicana, using tax incentives, built the Quarter, the shopping and restaurant mall that’s been a hit in its first nine months of operation. And the Borgata, which broke the Atlantic City casino model and introduced a Las Vegas-style balance of hotel, shopping, dining and entertainment with gaming, has been wildly successful. “They’re eating everybody’s lunch,” Bashaw says. That’s one reason other casinos in town are also planning expansions and upgrades, with thousands of hotel rooms expected to be added in the next several years.
Bashaw can employ his Wharton training and talk at length about the complicated bond-financing structure used for the Boardwalk Initiative, or the minutiae of tax incentives to promote more retailing and restaurants, but for much of his tenure he has depended instead on his inner preacher. And he has one. Bashaw is the grandson of colorful evangelical minister Carl McIntire, who split from the Presbyterian Church (too liberal) and started his own rock-ribbed conservative congregation, college and publishing company, based in Collingswood, New Jersey. He developed a national reputation as one of the early radio evangelists. And he loved stunts. He played ping-pong outside the White House to protest Richard Nixon inviting the Chinese table tennis team to visit. When, during the Bicentennial, Queen Elizabeth gave the U.S. a Liberty Bell replica missing a Bible verse, Reverend McIntire dumped a fake Liberty Bell into the Delaware River as the Queen’s yacht sailed by.
Curtis, who grew up in Cherry Hill — his mom was one of the Reverend’s three children — was at his grandfather’s side both times. “He was sincere and authentic. He was full of energy. He was creative. And he was strong.” People give Bashaw credit for those same qualities. (He did come out to his grandfather, who died in 2002.)
The concept of an Atlantic City brand — less a conglomeration of competing casinos and more a destination resort like Las Vegas — is one of Bashaw’s Big Ideas, and it dovetails with the notion he first discussed with McGreevey in Cape May, of marketing the entire Jersey Shore as a brand. Using CRDA money, Bashaw organized a series of meetings called Summit on the Shore to develop ideas on how to market the entire 127-mile New Jersey coast as a single entity. The goal is to get the many communities from Cape May to Sandy Hook to stop competing with one another for tourist dollars and work together for the common good. What with the long-established rivalries and small-town politics involved, there’s a lot of Gee whiz in the notion. But Bashaw considers it another of his top achievements that a Jersey Shore marketing corporation was formed in late June, and he got to sign the incorporation papers under a roaring roller coaster on a Wildwood pier.
