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Casino would touch the sky
Home News Tribune Online 02/16/07
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTIC CITY — A new casino envisioned for this gambling resort could become New Jersey's tallest building if the City Council, as expected, eases height restrictions on skyscrapers.
The council is poised to vote next week on a measure raising the limit from the current 485 feet to 800 feet on a plot of land near the Boardwalk just north of the Showboat Casino Hotel.
A building that high would be the tallest in New Jersey, topping the current champion, the 781-foot Goldman Sachs office in Jersey City.
But the likely developer said the building probably won't reach 800 feet.
"That would be very tall, and the taller you get, the more expensive it becomes to build," Revel Entertainment Chairman and CEO Kevin DeSanctis told The Press of Atlantic City for Thursday's newspaper. But he said the company wants a visually stunning, landmark structure.
Now that Bader Field, the historic airport near the downtown area, has closed, officials say previous restrictions on how high buildings can be are no longer needed.
Last year, the city agreed to raise the height restriction for much of the Marina district to 560 feet to accommodate expansion of Harrah's Atlantic City Casino. The nearby Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa is Atlantic City's tallest, at 480 feet.
City planning director Bill Crane said he expects more tall buildings to rise along the Boardwalk because there is little room to expand horizontally. The current height limit for most of the Boardwalk casino zone is 385 feet.
"Now that Bader Field's closed, no pun intended, the sky's the limit," he said.
The Revel redevelopment area also includes the city-owned Garden Pier. Revel and the city have been talking since last fall about buying and rebuilding the pier, which was built in 1912 and once housed one of the resort's largest ballrooms. |
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