Magazine: TIME; JULY 14, 1997
Section: AMERICAN SCENE
IN THE NAME OF HER FATHER
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AN ATLANTIC CITY HOMEOWNER PREPARES TO FACE DOWN A
CASINO KING
For more than 30 years you live in a nice house on a quiet
street, and then one day there's a knock at the door. It's a man who
informs you that your home is going to be bulldozed to make way for
a roadway tunnel to a new casino. Sorry about that. But the owner of
the casino wants to do the right thing and pay you to wake the kids,
call the movers and start packing. Just sign right here, please.
Lillian E. Bryant, 53, knew just what to do, and so did several
other residents of Horace Bryant Jr. Drive in Atlantic City, N.J.
They looked that man in the eye, pointed to the door and told him to
get lost. "It's total arrogance," fumes Bryant, who had one more
reason than her neighbors to be ticked off. The street she lives on
is named after her father, a former state banking and insurance
commissioner who died in 1983. She and her mother Lillian W., 86,
wouldn't think of leaving. "I can't," Lillian W. says. "It isn't
right. And how could I look for another place and start all over at
my age? I'm too old for that."
But the Bryants have grown more and more alone in voicing
opposition in the year and a half since Mirage casino mogul Steve
Wynn said he would build a Las Vegas-style extravaganza a mile from
the Boardwalk in Atlantic City's Marina district. The women do have
Donald Trump--that renowned champion of the little guy--on their
team. How could so many politicians bend over backward to please an
out-of-town money changer? asks the man who would be in direct
competition with Wynn. Oh, the hypocrisy! But even Donald has been
trumped. Seven of the 10 homeowners on Bryant Drive have said yes to
Wynn's buyout offer, because either they liked the terms or they
decided there was no way to slay a giant. It's Atlantic City, after
all, where Monopoly is no game. Buy four houses and you can build a
hotel. "It's a done deal," said carpenter Clarence Mobley, 46, on
the porch of a Bryant Drive house he built himself. He said the
offer he accepted from Wynn was about $200,000, which is maybe twice
the market value.
The Bryants have a billboard-size NO TUNNEL sign in front of
their split-level, four-bedroom house. But they can almost hear the
bulldozer creeping closer, with bids on the roadway project due this
week, and it isn't just Steve Wynn who's behind the wheel. If the
bids are within projections, he will have New Jersey Governor
Christie Whitman and Atlantic City Mayor James Whelan with him, all
of them preaching the gospel of small personal sacrifices for the
greater public good. If you build it, suckers will come. As will
thousands of jobs, millions of dollars in tax revenues and a rising
tide of new prosperity that "will float all boats," as Whitman's
flack says.
"Tell me about it," says Lillian E., a retired city employee who
heard the same hustle when the casinos came to town 20 years ago.
Today, Bryant's neighborhood is the last stable, middle-class,
mostly black area in all of boom-or-bust Atlantic City. Bryant says
she's not against new casinos, she's against uprooting good
neighborhoods so outsiders can pretend they're in Shangri-La. "Steve
Wynn must have something good on these people. The state is
bickering about having to pay $200 million for public education by
an order of the Supreme Court, but they'll spend $300 million to
build a private driveway for a billionaire."
In fact, Wynn would pay $55 million of the projected $330 million
cost of the 1.8-mile roadway. Wynn spokesman Alan Feldman, who
shamelessly wonders if the holdout residents are trying to bluff
more money out of Mirage, says the project will provide road
improvements that were planned years ago and will make the
neighborhood a better place. Mayor Whelan insists that other roadway
routes would have displaced even more homeowners. He's sorry about
Bryant Drive, but if Atlantic City doesn't take this next step--"Not
just another casino, but an 'Oh, wow!' destination resort"--it will
die. He says Circus Circus and Boyd Gaming may build next to
Mirage's planned Le Jardin, which will resemble a gigantic
terrarium.
They could have Siegfried and Roy swinging from vines, and it
wouldn't change the take on Bryant Drive. Residents and three
homeowner associations lost a lawsuit to block the takeover, which
is now on appeal. In March the same group filed suit in federal
court, alleging a civil rights violation. The state stands prepared
to wield the power of eminent domain, a legal term meaning "we can
do anything we want." But the Bryants and their neighbors--Gussie
Ellis and her family of five, and Pierre Hollingsworth's family of
three, which rents from a local minister--are digging in. The street
was named after a man who stood for something, Lillian W. said in
her living room. "My husband was a fighter, and he wouldn't have
allowed this. We're not going anywhere."
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By STEVE LOPEZ
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