Robert Hunter(don) (1710-20)

Robert Hunter was born in Edinburgh and was “the grandson of the laird of Hunterston.” Eventually a county would come to bear his name. After spending some time in a “socially dazzling captivity” by the French, he was appointed governor of New York and New Jersey.

Hunter ran right into a mess of proprietorship when he arrived. The sale of shares in West and East Jersey had devolved to the point where there were competing groups of proprietors. One group led by Daniel Coxe, son of former Governor Coxe, and another by Lewis Morris. In line with some British politics and patronage, Hunter was able to remove the Coxe faction from the upper chamber of the legislature. Coxe was able to mount a comeback in the Assembly a few years later and was named speaker. In fact, he was named speaker several times since Hunter would consistently dissolve the Assembly until “the Quaker or country party had 50 percent of the seats.”

Eventually, Coxe was defeated and fled the state. Hunter attempted a few reforms that required the crown’s approval but was denied. His term ended in 1719 but was appointed governor of Jamaica in 1727 where he died several years later.

Hunter also has the distinction of being the author of the earliest known published play in America. Androboros which lambasted his political enemies. You can read the whole thing here.

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This is the eleventh in a series of brief summaries from The Governors of New Jersey. These posts are not meant to be comprehensive and I urge you to pick up a copy of the book if you have any interest in New Jersey history

Richard Ingoldesby (1709-10)

Richard Ingoldesby took office after the death of John Lovelace. He was a hold over from Cornbury’s time and due to some bureaucratic mishaps some people doubted the legitimacy of his post. The British had no desire to appoint him to a full term.

The most interesting bit in Eugene Sheridan’s essay is the way Ingoldesby tried to discredit the Quakers in the Assembly. The Assembly was attempting to pass a bill in order to raise funds to equip volunteers to invade Canada. The Quakers, being nonviolent, came up with a way to vote down the bill but still have the non-Quaker member approve it allowing them to vote against it while avoiding the “embarrassment of thwarting a measure deemed vital to local and imperial interests.”

Ingoldesby got two supporters to vote against it on the third reading and then adjourned the Assembly in order to make filling the quota impossible. He then “joined the council in urging the home authorities to exclude Quakers from all public offices in the province.” I know. What a jerk.

The whole Glorious Enterprise bit never took off and the rest of hid administration seems to consist of him pining to be the fully appointed governor of New York.

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This is the tenth in a series of brief summaries from The Governors of New Jersey. These posts are not meant to be comprehensive and I urge you to pick up a copy of the book if you have any interest in New Jersey history

John Lovelace is barely worth writing about. (1708-09)

So the book I’m reading through is comprehensive in giving each and every governor an essay. No matter how brief and uninteresting their tenure.

Case in point is John Lovelace. After replacing Lord “Shrieking Laughter” Cornbury who was recalled for corruption, Lovelace spent his time negotiating with the New York and New Jersey Assemblies over salary. He took office in December 1708 and by May 5th of 1709 both states agreed on salary for their new governor.

He promptly died of a stroke the next day.

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This is the ninth in a series of brief summaries from The Governors of New Jersey. These posts are not meant to be comprehensive and I urge you to pick up a copy of the book if you have any interest in New Jersey history

Our parking runneth over

Downtown Newark has an abundance of parking lots. Not so much to beat Dallas in Streetsblog’s Parking Madness but ridiculous nevertheless.

Some property owners near the train station are attempting to put in more surface parking to take advantage of the Pulaski Skyway closure and projected increased ridership into Manhattan. The residents are fed up and have taken the lead to try to stop the latest loss of street life. (Note: I have attended the Zoning Board meetings as an objector and know many of the organized residents personally but haven’t been involved in the strategy or hiring of an attorney.) 

There’s been some good writing on the proliferation of surface parking and its effects and I encourage you to read them. (Here. And here.) For that, I won’t go into why the surface lots are a cancer to city life but suffice to say, they’re pretty terrible.

What I did want to see is what car ownership rates are like in the region. I had heard that Newark has the second lowest rate of car ownership in the country behind only New York City and I wanted to see how this played out throughout the region. My assumption was that the lowest rates of ownership would be in the poorest areas.

This map surprised me. The two Census tracts just east of Penn Station in the Ironbound have some of the highest rates of no car households in the county. There are four sizable tracts in the county that have no car households over 60%. (There is one tract near the airport that has 23 people none of which own a car.) So I decided to map out median income as well.

While the city is not wealthy we see that the poorest tracts are focused in the West and South Wards. There are poorer areas in Newark with higher rates of car ownership than in the Ironbound. It appears that people are living in the Ironbound and making due without a car by choice.

There may be an argument that suburban commuters need parking but I would encourage them to go to Secaucus or suggest we build a mixed use project with parking garage and wrap around retail.

A “Las Vegas style casino” just means you’re not in Las Vegas

The casino talk in the New York region keeps up. It’s important that any New Jersey discussion of whether or not to expand casino gaming outside of Atlantic City include the fact that casino expansion is likely in New York near the city.

I’ve already discussed the problems with the hope that gambling can have a positive impact on a region’s economy so I just want to focus a bit on the problems of a “Las Vegas style casino.”

Google returns over 3 million hits for that phrase. None of the top results are a definition for what exactly a “Las Vegas style casino” is. (Any time they add the word “style” to another word, someone is pulling your *****.) Back when I did some research on the approval of casino gaming ballot measure in New Jersey, I came across some great quotes of casino proponents promising they wouldn’t have casinos like Las Vegas. They called them “honky tonk” casinos. Think the diviest dive bars. Casino proponents in New Jersey promised us class.

So what makes a casino Las Vegas style? Restaurants? Entertainment? Shopping? Massive hotels? Sounds a lot like the Atlantic City casinos that we have today. So why don’t we call them “Atlantic City style casinos?” Because Atlantic City gaming is in decline and there’s nothing inherently special about the style of casino in Vegas. Las Vegas is successful and Atlantic City isn’t. This is a marketing term and you shouldn’t let it fool you.

There’s one place where this type of monstrosity could make sense. I suppose if you wanted to add to the monstrosity Xanadu money pit the American Dream Meadowlands you should have all those things in one massive shrine to 20th Century shopping habits. Then we can wonder why it failed again.

If a North Jersey casino is inevitable, and it might be, it needs to follow good urban planning sense and be placed in a city. It should be small scale with a hotel but limited restaurants and no retail shopping. Or at least no shopping that doesn’t have street frontage.

Atlantic City thought casinos were the ticket to revitalization but those hulking behemoths turned their back on the fabric of the city. They brought tourism dollars into their own closed economy and the residents suffered for it. We shouldn’t make the same mistake again. If casino gaming is going to be spread as form of entertainment, it needs to be regulated in a way that helps residents and the region instead of attempting to maximize state tax collection.

But we’ll probably end up with something that looks like this.

Atlantic City Ghost Town

As if to prove the point of my earlier post, Mark Di Ionno has a piece on the emptiness of the boardwalk and the beach.

Read the whole thing but below are a few good quotes:

“The fascination of slot machines is over with,” Terrigino said. “More gambling isn’t the solution. If we don’t make it fun for people in Atlantic City, they’ll make us irrelevant.”

“We threw all the eggs in one basket. Maybe this is a wake-up call.”

Atlantic City took its greatest attraction [the beach] and made it inaccessible.

“Our beaches are beautiful. You can’t beat it,’ said Terrigino, “but other towns do better bringing people to the beach.”

As Atlantic City casinos close, ghost town replaces boardwalk empire | NJ.com.

Atlantic City’s Uncertain Future

The Philly Inquirer has an article highlighting the unprecedented job losses that the Atlantic City region is about to face. It’s certainly going to be a challenge for the city and the state. While the state will need to focus on retraining and matching these workers with new jobs, the other side of recovery is what to do about Atlantic City itself.

This quote by mayor Don Guardian just seems wrong to me.

“At $50 million [Revel], it’s certainly a bargain-basement price for a brand-new facility. It’s finding the right buyer, meaning having the financial wherewithal, and then that buyer finding the right brand to come in and run it,” he said.

While it may make sense to retool Revel for another casino given the construction of the building, the idea that we need to simply find the right “brand” is misguided. Gamblers aren’t abandoning Atlantic City because they prefer the brand of their local casinos. They prefer the location. Atlantic City has lost its monopoly on east coast gaming and it will have to face the fact that casino gaming is going to make up a far smaller portion of its tourist economy.

Atlantic City will benefit from standard quality of life and urbanist infrastructure upgrades. Asbury Park was able to improve its downtown and boardwalk without casino gaming after being labeled a ghost town by Weird NJ in the late 1990s. Atlantic City needs to follow its lead and work on small scale projects that bring residents, offices, and retail to the downtown.

The city is facing similar issues to New Jersey’s other urban areas. What makes it different is its beachfront and the failed revitalization attempt of casino gaming. It should be able to use the same tools that helped revitalize portions of Newark, New Brunswick and Asbury Park while also leveraging its unique assets.

I’m still an optimist when it comes to Atlantic City’s future. Here’s to hoping decision makers get a little more grounded in their attempts.

via Atlantic City facing unprecedented economic collapse – Philly.com.

Lord Cornbury wore women’s clothing. Or maybe he didn’t. (1703-08)

Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury is perhaps the most infamous of all New Jersey’s governors. He was the first royal governor appointed directly by the crown and is presumed to have had an affinity to wear women’s clothing. Or maybe that was all a smear campaign. 

Lord Cornbury?

Cornbury was considered one of the “lesser nobility” in England. Men of this class struggled “to feed their families and pay their debts.” He was even arrested on his way to New York for failure to pay his debt. (New Jersey shared its governor with New York for the early part of the 18th Century.) The proprietors who used to selected governors for the previously split East and West Jersey still claimed ultimate ownership of all the land and fought local inhabitants on this account. The proprietors were able to bribe Cornbury with £200 and so he supported their cause.

In addition to his propensity to take bribes, Cornbury, an Anglican, sold tracts of land and gave money to his friends all the while discriminating against the Quakers. Political corruption and religious discrimination! Fun times!

The assembly finally convinced Queen Anne to remove him and he lived the rest of life struggling with debt in England. Marc Mappen writes, “Cornbury has been regarded as the quintessential arrogant, corrupt, and incompetent royal governor.” 

Mappen doesn’t delve too deeply into the allegations of wearing women’s clothing that Cornbury is most well known for and rightly so since there is little evidence from anyone other than his contemporary enemies that he did so. Still, this section from Wikipedia is too great not to share:

Later historians characterise him as a “degenerate and pervert who is said to have spent half of his time dressed in women’s clothes”, a “fop and a wastrel”. He is said to have delivered a “flowery panegyric on his wife’s ears” after which he invited every gentleman present to feel precisely how shell-like they were; to have misappropriated £1500 meant for the defence of New York Harbor, and, scandalously, to have dressed in women’s clothing and lurked “behind trees to pounce, shrieking with laughter, on his victims”.^[1]

Cornbury is reported to have opened the 1702 New York Assembly clad in a hooped gown and an elaborate headdress and carrying a fan, imitative of the style of Queen Anne. When his choice of clothing was questioned, he replied, “You are all very stupid people not to see the propriety of it all. In this place and occasion, I represent a woman (the Queen), and in all respects I ought to represent her as faithfully as I can.” It is also said that in August 1707, when his wife Lady Cornbury died, His High Mightiness (as he preferred to be called) attended the funeral again dressed as a woman. It was shortly after this that mounting complaints from colonists prompted the Queen to remove Cornbury from office.^[2]

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This is the eighth in a series of brief summaries from The Governors of New Jersey. These posts are not meant to be comprehensive and I urge you to pick up a copy of the book if you have any interest in New Jersey history

Jeremiah Basse was unskilled and unlucky. (East and West Jersey, 1698-99)

Jeremiah Basse served as governor while Andrew Hamilton had his Scottish question cleared up. (Parliament had enacted a law that presumably only allowed natural born Englishmen to serve as governors.) Basse’s tenure – all 20 months of it –  is considered to have been pretty terrible for New Jersey.

Basse was able to stick it to New York, which is something most people from New Jersey can always get behind. New York thought of East Jersey as basically an extension of itself and required ships docking at the port of Perth Amboy to go through customs in New York. Basse thought this was wrong so he tested it by having a ship he and his brother-in-law owned come in without clearing with New York. So New York seized it. Basse actually won a lawsuit against New York’s governor Richard, Lord Bellomont in 1700. 

Basse tried to get into the good graces of the legislature by signing bills that appealed to them. It didn’t work. Lewis Morris (a future governor) led protests and was arrested only to be broken out of jail by his supporters. In addition, Basse was unable to establish authority in West Jersey. 

The rejection of Basse’s authority took many forms. The governor’s summons of a general assembly went unheeded. The former provincial treasurer refused to provide the new administration with his accounts. Sammuel Jennings, speaker of the assembly, concealed the “Book of the Laws” and other important papers. Mobs obstructed courts at Salem and Burlington.

Basse was removed from power in 1699. Shortly after, the proprietary form of governance collapsed and England began to appoint royal governors. 

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This is the seventh in a series of brief summaries from The Governors of New Jersey. These posts are not meant to be comprehensive and I urge you to pick up a copy of the book if you have any interest in New Jersey history

Building a casino in North Jersey is a terrible idea. It’ll probably happen anyway.

Atlantic City. Photo courtesy of Robert Bruce Murray III. (https://www.flickr.com/photos/thirddesign/3360127031)

The New York Times reports on a proposed “vision” for a mega-casino in the Meadowlands. The plans call for “a Las Vegas-style casino, two 1,000-room hotels, a one-million-square-foot convention center and a youth sports center at the Meadowlands Sports Complex, less than nine miles west of Manhattan.”

This is a terrible idea. It will probably get built anyway.

The announcement of Revel’s closure marks the fourth and most high profile casino failure in Atlantic City this year. It’s yet another piece of terrible news for the city that continues to see gaming revenue decline year over year. Why is gaming seemingly on the decline in Atlantic City while gaming revenue is up everywhere else? For the same reasons Atlantic City declined in the mid-twentieth century. It’s losing its grasp on a near monopoly.

If there is one thing that drove the decline in Atlantic City tourism before the advent of casino gaming, it was the introduction of relatively cheap air travel. Tourists gained the ability to go anywhere in the country in a more reasonable amount of time than train or automobile travel could offer. The Northeast could now easily reach points south which are warm year round. Simply said, the supply rose to meet demand.

And so New Jersey turned to casino gaming, both as a means to spur revitalization in Atlantic City and as a revenue source. (There was no state income tax at the time and the sales tax was relatively new.) The steps leading up to the passage of casino gaming are fascinating and deserve their own post so I won’t go into it here.

Did casino gaming help Atlantic City? Well, if by “help” you mean “alleviate social ills and spur the local economy” then the answer would be “no.” Anyone who’s been to Atlantic City knows that once you step off the boardwalk or outside of the Fortress of Solitude that is the Borgata, the city looks like most distressed urban areas. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia published a report [PDF] on Atlantic City as a lesson for policy-makers looking to turn to casino gaming.

Atlantic City’s unemployment and poverty rates are considerably higher than those in the rest of New Jersey and the nation. The 2000 census reported that 19 percent of the population lived in census tracts that meet the definition of extreme poverty neighborhoods; that is, they had poverty rates of at least 40 percent. Per capita income in the city is among the lowest in the state.
Compounding the situation are a high crime rate, an active drug trade, and gang activity. Also, despite the city’s high per pupil spending, the graduation rate for Atlantic City students is considerably lower than that for the state as a whole. Vacant houses and lots are a common sight, residents have access to few retail outlets, and the city has no supermarket. Furthermore, the level of noncasino employment has declined significantly

Maybe that’s because Atlantic City approached gaming and revitalization the wrong way. Or maybe it’s because the style of casino people insist on building is terrible for revitalization efforts. Hulking behemoths that are designed to keep visitors within their walls and away from the city by offering gaming, restaurants, shops, bars, and more.

Even if this wasn’t the case, we should be skeptical that casinos could give a jolt to a local economy today. Jake Blumgart for the Pacific Standard writes,

But no matter how often pundits and boosters use the term ‘Las Vegas-style casinos,’ the fact is that most communities will never experience the kind of economic boost given to Clark County or South Jersey. Las Vegas and Atlantic City were unique because they dominated a market defined by scarcity. Their customers were mostly out-of-towners who would not have otherwise spent money in the region. Tens of thousands of unionized working class jobs were sustained by a steady flow of tourist and convention dollars, cushioning both regions from capital flight and the low-wage economy.

As Atlantic City gaming declines and the city tries to re-reinvent itself back to a general resort and tourist destination, what will a North Jersey casino do for the region and state? New Jersey loves its casino tax revenue and isn’t going to just sit back and watch those dollars flow to other state governments. So a North Jersey casino, while it will assuredly cannibalize some gaming revenue from Atlantic City, is probably seen more as a backstop by policy-makers. A North Jersey casino may very well bring in additional revenue or at least turn the tide of revenue leaving the state but it will do so at the expense of the rest of the tourism industry in the region. (Some may argue that the convention center would be the major draw. This is also a terrible idea.) And since New Jersey doesn’t have a say on what happens across the Hudson, I would expect to see more New York casinos open as well. The New York Times piece I referenced in the beginning of this post mentions that “claims of glamorous, revenue-generating machines are being made by companies in New York State that are vying for casino licenses at locations within 50 miles of Manhattan.” So the hold a North Jersey casino may have on that market will probably be even more short-lived than Atlantic City had.

Rafi Farber:

[T]he only way gambling can increase tax revenue for a State government is if gambling attracts capital from outside the state’s jurisdiction. This is unlikely for New Jersey, even if gambling is legalized outside of Atlantic City. Those who consider going to New Jersey from outside New Jersey to gamble will likely not be any more attracted by a casino outside of Atlantic City than they already are by casinos inside Atlantic City. The possible exception might be a New Jersey casino situated right off Manhattan, which is Christie’s only hope of increasing tax revenue on net to his coffers, and even that will be short lived when New York inevitably fights back to keep gambling revenue inside its own State borders.

So what’s the big deal? The Meadowlands isn’t in decline like Atlantic City and if the state is losing revenue anyway, why shouldn’t it invest in a backstop casino?

Because we’ve heard this story before. The idea that mega-projects like Xanadu/American Dream or this proposed casino is going to save the state from raising revenue from traditional sources or somehow stimulate the local economy is wishful thinking. There would be a short-term bump in employment from construction but once built, it will probably be too big to fail like Revel and Xanadu.

The one big hiccup in the plans to expand casino gaming is that it would require voter approval. And the voters don’t seem too keen on letting it happen, rejecting the idea 50% to 42%. Though that is a narrower margin than in years past.

So what’s going to happen? An amendment allowing statewide gaming passes after a big push from casino and construction industry interests. The casino will be built in the Meadowlands (Sorry, Jersey City) and qualify for an obscene amount of tax incentives, grants and various other breaks. The casino will struggle financially and gaming revenue will continue to decline.

New Jersey will once again suffer from a politically easy but fiscally misguided decision.