For centuries now, several piers have dotted the Atlantic City boardwalk, and they were always far from mere fishing docks. There’s the famous Steel Pier, which hosted several entertainment attractions through the decades, from horse diving (look it up) to the current amusement park. There’s the Garden Pier, now the home of the Atlantic City Museum. And then there’s the Million Dollar Pier, which always looked less like a wooden dock and more like a long building jutting into the ocean. Following the casino boom in the 80s it became a shopping mall, known as The Shops on Ocean One. Then in 2006 the pier was purchased by Caesars, who connected it to the main property via skybridge and turned it into The Pier Shops at Caesars, as it’s now known today.
The Pier Shops were born during the financial height of Atlantic City. With the Tanger Outlets (‘The Walk’) performing admirably, it was decided that AC needed an upscale swath of boutiques to complement the factory stores. All 11 casinos at the time were on the up, and there was no recession in sight… yet. Thus the Pier Shops were born as New Jersey’s answer to Fifth Avenue or Rodeo Drive. Two floors of premium retail space, a third floor composed entirely of unique restaurants, and a ‘secret’ fourth floor to rent out for weddings or other private events, literally right out on the ocean. Taking a cue from the Forum Shops in Vegas’ Caesars Palace, the new Pier Shops at Caesars merged opulence with oceanfront, creating a mall unlike any other in the world. It was cultivated by Taubman Centers, which owns many other upscale malls including Crystals and The Mall at Short Hills, and appropriately enough they only allowed the cream of the crop to take up residence in the Pier. It had Gucci, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Apple, Armani… names and labels that never had a presence in Atlantic City (or South Jersey in general), until now.
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| The lobby. That beautiful display bottom left is now a Cinnabon/Auntie Anne's combo. -_- |
And what would a Caesars property be without a little spectacle? At the far end of the Pier stood an attraction cryptically known as ‘The Show,’ a circular atrium surrounding a giant network of fountains. On the hour, the house lights would dim and the fountains would activate in preset patterns of dancing waters, flashing lights and music on cue. The Show was one of the first major, exclusive, and free non-gaming attractions in Atlantic City, pre-dating the current trend of introducing family-friendly attractions by several years.
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| The Show during one of its shows. May 2012. |
All this was incredibly situated on a pier in the Atlantic Ocean, connected to one of AC’s more luxurious boardwalk casinos. One can flit to and from the Pier to Caesars proper without ever setting foot outside, a godsend during those winter months. Guests staying at Bally’s or Claridge can also pass through to the Pier via a series of indoor connections, and anyone who stayed at the adjacent Trump Plaza just had to brace the cold for mere seconds. The Pier had it all.
But today, the Pier is a dead mall.
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| Just a few storefronts down, and things get real quiet real fast. March 2015. |
You’ll enter either from the boardwalk or 2nd floor skybridge. At first, everything seems fine. There’s still Gucci and Louis in attendance, with Armani Exchange a bit further down. Yes, it’s odd to smell the Cinnabon and Auntie Anne’s so close to the designer suits and handbags, but you let it go. It’s Atlantic City, people… something’s gotta give. Continuing down the first floor, the storefronts get a bit sparse, and you notice the wraps covering up the empty retail spaces, trying to make it look intentional. Those tenants still remaining start looking a bit out of place, surely that Cellairis (cell phone covers and chargers) doesn’t need the fancy storefront it has (and is only using the front third). It’s especially jarring to see a full-fledged Guess store in the same area as ‘The Wall of Magnets,’ another re-positioned storefront that literally consists of a long wall of refrigerator magnets for sale. No kidding. You continue and reach the halfway point, a beautiful wood atrium with spiral stairs and exposed elevator work, allowing your first floor change since entering. It’s beautiful until you realize the plants are fake and dusty, you see labelscars of ‘THE SHOW’ on the signage, and there's an eerie silence from the zero customers passing through.
At this point, the first floor is roped off, you can no longer continue down the Pier from here. Puzzled and slightly nervous, you ascend to the second floor.
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| Stock photo of the second floor, probably around 2010. |
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| Second floor as of March 2015. |
Now the second floor was always designed to look like eternal night, with black ceilings and no proper lighting, but washed in ‘starlights’ of different colors, though mostly green. During the Pier’s prime, the starlights would combine with the storefronts to make the floor look much more inviting, like a main street thoroughfare after dark. A cool concept, as long as there are still stores standing. Curiously, the second floor allows further passage toward the ocean, but with nary a store to be seen. It’s genuinely dark and a bit creepy, voices carry from the few people that are strolling around and it all comes off a bit sketchy. In the distance is the light from a storefront: a lone Sunglass Hut. Its neighbors have all left, and it’s highly unlikely this location is earning its keep.
Then you get to The Show at the far end. Or at least, where The Show used to be…
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| The Show has been completely removed. March 2015. |
Empty, boarded over, and almost ghostly. The Show atrium used to house several stores, ample spectating space, and the scaffolding of lights and speakers that made The Show well, the show. Now the far end of the Pier holds nothing. Adding insult to irony, barely visible through one of the larger storefronts are signs advertising blacklight mini-golf inside, though it’s hard to tell if it’s even open. What used to punctuate the start of the ocean with a bang, has now dropped off with a thud.
Ascending the transparent escalators on the far end, you approach the third floor, wondering how it can get any worse.
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| Third floor as of March 2015. The Pier's saving grace. |
But to your surprise, the third floor is bustling! The Pier’s third floor is exclusively restaurants, and fine dining at that. The layout is quite unorthodox, as the floor is essentially wide open, with the restaurants, each with their own identity, weaving around each other. Some utilize their space very impressively, like the Continental. It’s made of a chain of dining ‘islands’ accented with fire pits and connected by bridges over moat-like channels. Even if it’s in between mealtimes with few diners eating, the open floor plan adds them up and makes each restaurant look that much busier. The third floor is noticeably the brightest, with large windows flanking each side allowing sunlight and lovely views of the beach and boardwalk. At night, the casino lights take over and make Atlantic City look surprisingly chic and alive. Having completed your circuit, you descend back down to the ground floor, re-smell the Cinnabon and Auntie Anne’s, ogle Gucci and Louis and venture back outside to the boardwalk, leaving you confused and bewildered as to what the heck you just walked through.
How… how… were the Pier Shops allowed to disintegrate like this?! I get it: recession, general AC downfall, cutting back, yeah I know. But this is the Pier! This was *the* premier shopping mall of the city, if not the county! With Caesars’ name proudly emblazoned on it, the new Pier Shops were set up as a reason why Caesars AC is a step up from the other boardwalk casinos. Why were the upscale tenants allowed to break their leases, why were places like the godforsaken Wall of Magnets given the OK next to Guess and Gucci, why wasn’t The Show better utilized (holiday themed shows, hello??), and most importantly, why was this place allowed to die? Really Caesars, you were one of the few guys turning a profit in AC. You couldn’t lend the Pier a few bucks to stay relevant? You couldn’t find a way to integrate your Total Rewards program into customer incentives for Pier shopping? (At this point Caesars should just hire me. I'm serious.) And in typical AC fashion, instead of trying to fix what’s broken, you just literally put a velvet rope in front of it and pretended it wasn’t there. Not cool.
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| Directories still reflect the Pier's heyday. Over half of these stores are no longer there. March 2015. |
Thank god someone is coming in to revitalize the degradation Caesars allowed the Pier to sink to. A guy named Blatstein. He sees the Pier for what it is: a unique property that can be put to unique uses, in a city that desperately needs some unique ideas to disguise the fact that it’s uniquely screwed. According to recent announcements, he sees the Pier as a mix for the existing restaurants, new music venues, bowling alleys (ingenious given the Pier’s rectangular shape), and maybe even a pool club in The Show’s atrium. A year-round pool on top of the ocean, think about that. Ironically, the Pier’s possible new life echoes the former Showboat (closed prematurely by Caesars themselves last year), as the Showboat opened with a large bowling center and later became known for its House of Blues extension. Could the new Pier be a reincarnated Showboat? This time it’ll actually be on the water, as all good boats should be. =P
Like its boardwalk cousin Revel, the Pier Shops at Caesars were born in a period of economic rise but had the misfortune of living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both tried to court an upscale clientele that simply wasn’t there. And with Revel already dead in the water, the Pier is on life support. One can only hope that Caesars just lets Blatstein buy the Pier with no strings attached and no drama, unfortunate staples of AC deals these days. Let him make it whatever he wants. Anything is better than what is now.
Because what it is now is just damn pathetic.
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| The (Million Dollar) Pier back in 1950. Amazing how things change, and it was probably better off staying like this. |
