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Meeting planners, brands, and prospective visitors can now experience everything Atlantic City’s convention scene has to offer from the comfort of their chairs, thanks to a new virtual reality (VR) experience created through Meet AC’s partnership with YouVisit.
 
The YouVisit experience will ultimately assist the Meet AC sales team to meet their yearly room night goals, while focusing on bookings at the Atlantic City Convention Center, newly opened properties and re-branded products. The YouVisit experience will offer meeting planners a clearer, more immersive view of Atlantic City as they virtually experience the Convention Center and surrounding destinations using this engaging and effective technology.
 
“We are thrilled to partner with YouVisit and make full use of their advanced virtual reality technology. Meeting planners will have the opportunity to not only virtually experience the Atlantic City Convention Center from any device, but will also be able to experience Atlantic City’s iconic sites throughout the experience,” said Jim Wood, president and CEO of Meet AC. “Meeting planners have evolved a new outlook when it comes to site selection, and this platform of virtual interaction will make their decision easier.”
 
YouVisit creates virtual experiences for businesses and institutions around the world that can be viewed from multiple platforms, including leading virtual reality headsets, mobile devices, and web browsers. YouVisit’s virtual experiences are designed to replicate and enhance real-life experiences through rich media, including professional photos, videos, 360-degree panoramas and much more.
 
“With a picturesque seaside location and an award-winning convention center, Atlantic City is one of the premiere meeting and events destinations in the world. It was a true pleasure for our team to bring all the sights and sounds to life in live 360° and VR,” said Gordon Meyer, director of marketing of YouVisit. “Event planners’ choice of Atlantic City will be made even easier now that they can explore it for themselves in 360° without ever having to leave the office.”
 
In addition, another component of Meet AC’s interactive floorplans is an App that can be found in the Apple iTunes Store or Google Play Store titled Meet AC. The viewer will experience a custom virtual reality app of our interactive experience at the Atlantic City Convention Center, Boardwalk Hall and surrounding area.
 
View the “Meet Atlantic City Experience” at: www.youvisit.com/tour/meetac. For more information regarding Meet AC, please visit, www.meetac.com.

An email scandal that led to the resignation of several top Miss America pageant officials may also hurt the pageant’s relationship with Atlantic City.

The Miss America Organization receives a $4 million subsidy from the state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to hold the pageant in the resort. The recent scandal has caused several Atlantic City area lawmakers to question the deal and whether the resort is getting its money’s worth.

State Assemblymen Chris Brown and Vince Mazzeo, state Senator Colin Bell, and Atlantic City Mayor Frank Gilliam have all called on the authority to get out of the final year of the agency’s contract, according to the Press of Atlantic City.

“Renewing the multimillion-dollar Miss America contract with CRDA was never the right move,” said Mazzeo. “It’s time to end the handout and move on. Atlantic City has too many good things happening in the future to be stuck on an event that has only brought in a respectful return in the distant past.”

The pageant found itself embroiled in controversy after leaked emails by pageant officials—including former CEO Sam Haskell—making derogatory and lewd comments about past pageant winners. Several members of the pageant’s board have resigned and Dick Clark Productions—the pageant’s TV partner—cut ties with the Miss America organization.

Former Miss America Gretchen Carlson has been named the new chairman of the pageant’s board and several other former pageant winners have also been named to the board.

“Everyone has been stunned by the events of the last several days, and this has not been easy for anyone who loves this program,” Carlson said in a press statement. “In the end, we all want a strong, relevant Miss America and we appreciate the existing board taking the steps necessary to quickly begin stabilizing the organization for the future.”

But the controversy has also re-ignited a long-standing local debate of the pageant’s importance to Atlantic City. The pageant originated in Atlantic City in 1921 and was a mainstay in the resort for decades, especially during its heyday in the 50s and 60s. However, the pageant left the resort in 2005 and was held in other cities for 10 years before returning. When the pageant returned, it negotiated a subsidy with CRDA.

According to the Press, the Miss America Organization and the authority signed its latest three-year deal to keep the pageant in the resort through 2018. Under the contract, the organization was to receive about $11.9 million in casino reinvestment funds over the three years.

“The CRDA finds the reports of the Miss America Organization and the behavior of its leadership troubling,” Christopher Howard, executive director of the CRDA, said in a press release. “The CRDA is working with our legal counsel to undertake an immediate review of its contract with the Miss America Organization and Dick Clark Productions to assess what steps we may need to take.”

Much of the rationale for the subsidy has revolved around the publicity the city receives for hosting the pageant. As part of the contract, the Miss America Organization is required to promote the resort during the opening of the pageant’s ABC telecasts.

Dick Clark Productions also agreed to include a live performance in Atlantic City in its annual “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” shows through 2019, but no performances from the resort have ever been included in that show.

Gilliam, the resort’s incoming mayor, said the split with Dick Clark Productions should be a deal breaker.

“It’s a great opportunity to pull out of the contract,” Gilliam told the Press. “Now that the television has gone, it’s not what we are paying for. I’m not one of the biggest fans of Miss America, because we don’t get back compared to what we give.”

Even after changes were made to the organization’s board, criticism over whether the pageant lived up to its end of the authority deal continued.

John Palmieri, a former head of CRDA also told the Press that the pageant no longer deserved the reinvestment funds. Palmieri left the authority in 2016 and helped negotiate the Miss America deal two years ago.

“Miss America Organization did very little to market and promote the pageant,” Palmieri told the paper. “They were supposed to do that. They kept coming to us asking us for money.”

Assemblyman Chris Brown said the authority should look at spending its money on events or projects that benefit Atlantic County residents.

“Which is why it doesn’t make sense to keep throwing taxpayer dollars trying to promote the resort through an event whose marketing ability and TV audience gets smaller and smaller each year,” Brown told the Press.

Despite a severe cold snap along the East Coast, Atlantic City’s Boardwalk opened a new Ferris wheel attraction at the city’s Steel Pier.

The $14 million, 227-foot attraction is designed to give riders views up and down the Atlantic coastline, said operator Anthony Catanoso.

“Seems like you can see forever, you can see all the way down to Sea Isle, all the way up to Barnegat,” he told the Press of Atlantic City. “Beautiful views.”

Catanoso said the Ferris wheel should operate about 300 days a year or whenever the temperature is above 38 degrees. The wheel’s gondolas are both heated and cooled.

“The wheel is going to be a perfect opportunity to have events there, groups, parties, weddings,” he said. “We already have two weddings scheduled for the wheel already.”

The project was partially funded with casino reinvestment dollars and is part of an effort to diversify tourist attractions in the resort beyond casino gambling.

It’s the third-largest wheel in the U.S. The High Roller in Las Vegas is the largest.

Frank Gilliam Jr., 47, an Atlantic City native and former councilman-at-large, was sworn in as the resort’s new mayor succeeding Don Guardian, who served a single term.

At a swearing-in ceremony, Gilliam said he wants to make the city the “shining star of New Jersey.”

“It’s a surreal feeling. I feel very proud,” Gilliam told the Press of Atlantic City after the ceremony.

Gilliam was elected to the resort’s City Council in 2009 and was re-elected to his at-large seat in 2013.

Gilliam described his vision for the city following the ceremony, saying his ability to unify and bring in new ideas will help to foster the change the city needs during his term.

“We can expect progressiveness. We can expect open ideas. We can expect the question, ‘Why not? Why not Atlantic City?’” Gilliam said.

He said his first order of business as mayor will be to sit down with New Jersey state officials to discuss a future “partnership,” the Press reported. The state is currently in control of all city finances, but incoming Governor Phil Murphy has said he wants to end the state takeover.

Meanwhile, Guardian has accepted a job as municipal administrator for Toms River in Ocean County New Jersey.

In another story, former state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority Director John Palmieri and been named Newark deputy mayor for economic growth.

Palmieri was appointed CRDA director in 2011 and stepped down at the end of 2016. He oversaw $1 billion in redevelopment initiatives and investment in the city.

“This is my home state. I’m really happy to be able to remain in the state,” Palmieri told the Press. “The challenge of continuing to advance the mission of development in Newark was quite appealing.”

Palmieri will oversee non-real estate economic growth, such as infrastructure, transportation and development, helping to “shape the city’s multi-billion-dollar revitalization,” according to a press release.

One of the first politicians to support the legalization of gaming outside of Nevada died last week. Former New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne backed South Jersey politicians in 1974 that wanted to bring gambling to Atlantic City to revive the down-on-its-luck resort.

The referendum in 1974 allowed any community in New Jersey to legalize casinos with a local option. That vote went against legal gambling, so the wording was changed to allow casinos in Atlantic City only in 1976. It passed by a 55-45 margin.

When Resorts International opened its doors on Memorial Day 1978, Byrne showed up to cut the ribbon, warning organized crime to “keep your filthy hands off Atlantic City.”

While the regulatory scheme set up under the Byrne administration proved to be unwieldy and oppressive, it did manage to keep organized crime at bay. But the adversarial relationship between the regulators and the industry prevented Atlantic City from benefiting substantially from the casino industry.

Democrat Byrne was elected governor in 1974 and served until 1982, following a career as a hard-charging prosecutor. In addition to legalizing gaming, as governor he signed into law a state income tax for the first time, and created the state Department of Energy.

A graduate of Princeton, Byrne served in World War II in the Army Air Corps and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and other honors. He later earned his law degree at Harvard University.

New York’s Resorts World Catskills is moving up its opening date from March to mid-February to take advantage of the Lunar New Year festivities, a peak gambling season for the Asian clientele the property is targeting.

The fourth of the state’s new commercially owned casino hotels, and the largest of the four, has a slate of attractions planned for the occasion.

“We accelerated for the Lunar New Year,” said Executive Vice President Charles Degliomini. “We’re building a lot of amenities that cater to the Asian gaming market, and we didn’t want to miss that opportunity to surprise and delight our guests just by two weeks.”

The marketing will include luxury accommodations, authentic Asian cuisine, a full menu of baccarat and pai gow games, private salons for high rollers and a feng shui area for good luck.

In all, the $1.2 billion resort will feature 100,000 square feet of gaming, a 332-room hotel, a golf course and will sponsor charter jet service from Asia via the region’s Stewart International Airport.

Publicly traded Empire Resorts, which is developing the property and owns the nearby Monticello racetrack and racino, is majority held by Genting Group, the Malaysia-based conglomerate with deep roots in Asian gaming by virtue of large-scale integrated resorts in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.

Las Vegas dodged a potentially costly bullet last week when a provision was dropped from the Republicans’ $1.4 trillion tax overhaul that would have eliminated tax-exempt status for bonds used to finance construction of professional sports stadiums.

The exemption, which was included in the Senate’s version of the bill and agreed to by House leaders last week on the eve of the bill’s final passage, will save the Las Vegas Stadium Authority millions of dollars when it goes to market to borrow the lion’s share of the funding for a $1.9 billion domed stadium for the NFL Raiders. Plans call for the Authority to float bonds covering $750 million of the stadium’s cost backed by an increase in the Clark County hotel room tax.

Similarly, the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee is relying on the tax-exemption to keep a $1.4 billion expansion and renovation of the Las Vegas Convention Center affordable.

The original House proposal had called for elimination of the exemption to partially offset the massive tax cuts the bill provides for corporations and individuals.

Though support for the tax bill in Congress broke strictly along party lines, both Republicans and Democrats in Nevada lobbied hard to keep the exemption.