AC Boardwalk Project update:

Local, state, and federal officials were in Atlantic City on Thursday to celebrate the Absecon Inlet seawall and Boardwalk project that broke ground this summer, an infrastructure effort they say will turn some of the resort’s most vacant land into valuable property in vibrant new neighborhoods.

The project, expected to be completed in 2017, will cost more than $40 million, and will produce a continuous boardwalk running to Gardner’s Basin, built behind a seawall designed to protect the shoreline from flooding.

The project’s first phase, currently underway, is focused on the span from Oriental Avenue to Melrose Avenue. It is being paid for using $21.4 million from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is supervising construction, along with about $10 million in money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $1.1 million from the city.

The project’s second and third phases will be largely paid for using funds from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, respectively.

“I’ve lived in my home for 21 years, and for 21 years I heard we were going to fix the Boardwalk,” said Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian, flanked by dumpsters, cranes, and earth moving equipment. “By working with the county, the state, (and) the federal government, this is actually coming to fruition and we’re going to get this Boardwalk built.”

Pacific Avenue, where Guardian stood, has long faded into sand and rubble at the water’s edge, while the South Inlet’s flood-prone shoreline is interrupted only by isolated properties.

“In a year and a half,” Guardian said, “you’re going to be on the Boardwalk, on the water.”

That will spur real estate development, Guardian said, though he stressed that the city should require the area to remain accessible to a variety of income brackets.

Bob Martin, who directs the state’s DEP, was on hand to highlight the project as “another major milestone of resiliency along the coastline of New Jersey.”

“As Atlantic City rejuvenates and rebuilds itself, it’s another piece of the puzzle,” said U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd, also in attendance.

Not everyone supports the seawall’s construction, however. On Thursday, Jeff Tittel, who heads the New Jersey Sierra Club, listed a variety of objections he said the group has consistently raised with state agencies, though not with city officials themselves.

Among them, Tittel said the seawall as currently designed will push flood waters off to its sides, resulting in more flooding at Gardner’s Basin and in Brigantine.

“Atlantic City is a place where you may want to put in hardening structures,” he said, but added that “what needs to be done is to look at a regional approach” to flood mitigation.

That broader perspective is consistently lacking from municipal and state plans to adapt shorelines to rising seas, Tittel said.

A block away from the press conference, Teresa Smith, a manager at Hot Bagels and More on Pacific Avenue, was focused on the tangible business challenges in front of her.

The store was built when the former Revel and Showboat Casino were still open, and Smith expressed hope the Boardwalk project would provide her with new customers.

“People could come all the way down here, have breakfast, get right back on the Boardwalk and go back. It’s going to be wonderful,” she said optimistically before tempering her expectations

The industry reported $230.1 million in September 2015 gambling revenue, up 9.9 percent from last year.

That comparison includes revenue from two casino-hotels that closed last September — Revel Casino Hotel on Sept. 2 and Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino on Sept. 16.

When excluding those properties to assess current operators only, the picture was even rosier, with the remaining operators producing 10.8 percent more September revenue than last year, and six of the city’s eight casinos reporting gains, the state Division of Gaming Enforcement said.

The September numbers were positively affected by the timing of Labor Day weekend, a traditionally busy period in Atlantic City that fell entirely in September this year, as opposed to last year, when most of it was in August.

Combining revenue figures from both months shows that the current operators saw revenue increase 1.8 percent in August and September compared to the same months last year.

When factoring in closed casinos, though, the market was down nearly 5 percent during the two-month period.

“The calendar probably triggers a few percentage points of the increase,” but “there’s still kind of an uplift beyond the calendar,” said Alex Bumazhny, a casino analyst at Fitch Ratings, who said a favorable table-games hold percentage — the rate at which casinos keep gamblers’ money, which has a lot to do with luck — likely contributed to the September gains as well.

“It does look like the market is recovering,” he said. “2014 was pretty tough.”

And September 2014, when Revel and Trump Plaza closed, was arguably the toughest month of the toughest year in the history of Atlantic City, which began last year with 12 casinos and ended it with eight.

Since then, a duality has emerged in the market: Total industry revenue keeps sliding, and in 2015 will likely fall for the ninth straight year, but the remaining operators’ revenue is on the upswing, as they benefit from a market that’s less crowded with competition and absorb gamblers who patronized the casinos that closed.

The Atlantic City casino industry’s revenue has contracted by 8.4 percent, to $1.96 billion, in the first nine months of 2015 compared to the same stretch last year. The city’s current operators, though, have seen revenue increase 4.1 percent.

In addition to reporting total revenue, regulators have used the “current operators” subset as an alternate baseline that homes in on the health of the remaining Atlantic City outfits. Starting in October, the two-pronged approach will likely be abandoned, because by October 2014, Atlantic City had completed its mutation into an eight-casino town.

Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa saw the greatest year-over–year September 2015 revenue increase, reporting a $7.8 million one-month gain. Next was Caesars Atlantic City, with a $4.9 million increase, then Resorts Casino Hotel, which added $3.6 million.

For Resorts, that was a 31.8 percent increase from last year — the highest September growth rate reported Thursday. Golden Nugget Atlantic City, which saw revenue increase 20.9 percent, to $19.6 million, had the second-highest rate.

Bally’s Atlantic City and Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort reported September revenue declines of 4.2 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively.