In New Jersey, it costs them more than $50 million annually. They ripped apart the fabric of society and forcibly wove a new one.”īut casino owners are said to resent paying the steep cost of regulation that keeps them Mob-free. The casinos arrived in Atlantic City, recalls a writer there, “with no regard for the social fabric of the town no regard for what we were or what we wanted to be. Contemporary Hartford has defined itself as a great family place with its First Night, Taste of Hartford and Fourth of July celebrations, ethnic festivals and other similar activities. It is a city in transition, multicultural and corporate. It is not used to anything quite so gaudy as a casino. This is an old, staid, Yankee city with venerable business and cultural traditions. Hartford is like neither of those cities. Atlantic City was a small, decaying New Jersey resort with few economic growth options left when casinos were authorized in 1976. Las Vegas was not much past the saloon and sagebrush stage when, as legend has it, the Mob arrived and began casino construction on a grand scale in the 1940s.
