ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- A modern version of the famed amusement piers that once dotted Atlantic City's Boardwalk opens today, part ofan effort to attract families to a resort now known mostly for casinos.
After 103 years, the amusement piers and the bizarre jumble of novelties and oddities that made them famous are headed for oblivion, gutted by fires and ravaged by casino competition. Rising from the ashes, however, is Ocean One, a $40 million shopping mall and restaurant complex shaped like an ocean liner.
The three-tiered complex, the first non-gaming development to open in the resort since casinos were legalized, is built on the remnants of the Million Dollar Pier. It will feature 125 stores, 36 fast-food and gourmet eateries, a giant television screen and a World's Fair-type 'American Celebration' hall.
'Ocean One fills a retail vacuum in Atlantic City caused by the hotel-casino construction which has displaced many Boardwalk shops,' said Myles Tanenbaum, a director of Kravco Corp., the developer. 'No modern shopping facilities of any significance are available to the general public who work, live or spend time in Atlantic City.'
Mayor Michael Matthews hopes Ocean One will help the resort recapture its share of the family trade, which steadily slipped away as casinos sprang up.
'To the best of my knowledge, it's the first new pier opening in about 75 years,' Matthews said. 'I think it'll be an alternative for families who don't want to go into casinos. We're losing a lot of family trade. This'll help us compete for it. I think it will be a nice tourist attraction.'
It is nothing like the amusement piers that drew thousands to the shore for years.
Since 1880, when the long-gone West Jersey Pier opened, at least nine piers operated in Atlantic City for various lengths of time, surviving fires, hurricanes and sweeping changes in the public's entertainment tastes.
People who think of salt water taffy rather than Susan Sarandon when the name 'Atlantic City' is mentioned will remember a lot of them.
One, Steel Pier was built in 1898. An unknown juggler named W.C. Fields got a break there. Frank Sinatra, a herd of diving horses and a diving bell -- in which Louis Villani was married underwater to Ruth Ehler -- were attractions.
Sinatra plays the casinos now, someone tried to sell the horses for dog food a while back and Steel Pier was destroyed by fire last year.
Million Dollar Pier was opened in 1906 by John Young, who built on it a 12-room Italian villa where his wife bragged to friends she never, ever needed to dust, a grand ballroom, an aquarium and a theater. The pier, which had a mailing address of No. 1 Atlantic Ocean, is now the site of Ocean One.
On Central Pier, built in 1884, owner James Applegate provided music and vaudeville acts and went through 3000 pounds of ice a day to chill the water in a huge public drinking fountain.
The pier was damaged in a fire in 1981 and today is the home of a video arcade, some offices, a handful of rundown amusement games and a 'Space Needle' ride.
Garden Pier, which opened in 1913 and featured dancing, a theater, a flower plaza and later a local art museum, was destroyed by fire in 1981.
Steeplechase Pier is in its 77th season. It was opened in 1902 by George Tilyou, who gave the world Coney Island. But the folks who work there are sort of pessimistic about the future.
'People aren't interested anymore, I guess,' said amusement rides superintendent Nick Palance, a pier employee since 1939. 'We don't get the family crowd. People are coming here to gamble.'
'Years ago, you had families spend all day and all night going from pier to pier,' Palance recalled. 'They'd spend some time in the water in the morning, have something to eat and see a movie or a show in the afternoon, take the kids to the rides at night. We'd open at 10 a.m. and close around one in the morning.
'Now I think it's run its course,' he said. 'It'll never be the same again.'
Not everyone is convinced Ocean One will make it, either. The owners are hoping to attract a major share of the 20 million tourists expected in the city this year, but critics say they won't succeed without local business.
'Kravco's not interested in the residential market at all,' said merchants association president Fred Klein. 'They're strictly tourist oriented.'
'You know how many T-shirts you have to sell to make (the) $65,000-a-year rent?' Klein asked.
Matthews, who thinks Ocean One 'is going to be hard-pressed in the winter time without local people using it,' is a little worried, too.
But Matthews said developments like Ocean One are the wave of the future on the Boardwalk -- not the amusement piers of yesteryear.
'We'd like more amusements, sure, but the piers -- it's not, in this day and age, economically feasible,' he said. 'The land over there is too valuable.'
