The Inlet is the northernmost neighborhood of Atlantic City, occupying the few blocks closest to the channel between Absecon Island and Brigantine Island. It is geographically defined by the inlet itself on the north, the ocean on the east, and a transition into the more central blocks of the city as one moves south and west. Contemporary visitors to Atlantic City often experience the Inlet only in passing, as a less-developed area beyond the casino district that they pass through on their way somewhere else. The neighborhood has a longer and more complicated history than the contemporary appearance suggests.
This piece is about that history. It is about what the Inlet has been across the city's development, what changed across the casino-era construction and the various redevelopment cycles, and what the few blocks at the northern tip of the city continue to be today. The history matters partly for the same reason most neighborhood histories matter — the people who have lived there and the place that has been built deserve a record. It also matters because the Inlet is one of the parts of Atlantic City whose contemporary form is the most-direct result of specific redevelopment decisions made across the casino era, and understanding what was decided and what the alternatives were is part of understanding what the city is now.
The early Inlet
The Inlet developed as a distinct neighborhood in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The neighborhood was anchored by the inlet itself — a working channel that supported a substantial fishing fleet, a number of boat-building and boat-servicing operations, and the broader waterfront economy that was a substantial part of Atlantic City's pre-resort economy and that continued through the resort era as a parallel economic sector.
The residential character of the early Inlet was working-class and ethnically diverse. The neighborhood was home to substantial Italian-American, Irish-American, African-American, and Jewish-American communities through the early twentieth century, with overlapping social institutions, churches, synagogues, and community organizations that supported the neighborhood's social fabric. The housing stock was a mix of small-scale apartment buildings, rowhouses, and single-family wood-frame structures of the type that was typical of small-scale East Coast urban development in the period.
The commercial character of the neighborhood reflected the working-class population and the waterfront economy. The neighborhood had bars, restaurants, small grocery stores, and the various small-scale retail and service establishments that supported the residential community and the workforce of the waterfront sector. The commercial fabric was concentrated along several key streets, with a density and a mix of uses that contemporary urban-planning literature would describe as a healthy small-scale neighborhood economy.
The mid-century decline
The Inlet experienced the city's broader mid-century decline along with the rest of Atlantic City, and in some respects experienced it more intensely than other neighborhoods. The waterfront economy contracted substantially through the 1950s and 1960s as the regional fishing industry restructured and as the boat-building activity moved to other locations. The residential population contracted as the city's overall population declined, with some specific demographic groups leaving the neighborhood faster than others.
The housing stock deteriorated through the period as the cumulative effects of disinvestment worked through the building inventory. The commercial fabric thinned as the supporting residential population shrank. The public investment in the neighborhood's infrastructure was constrained by the city's overall fiscal pressure. By the early 1970s, the Inlet was a neighborhood with substantial physical decay, substantial vacancy, and substantial reduction in the residential and commercial activity that had defined the neighborhood through its earlier decades.
The conditions in the Inlet through the 1960s and into the 1970s were similar to those of urban-decline neighborhoods in many other East Coast cities through the same period. The structural causes were similar — population decline, economic restructuring, federal urban-policy decisions that had affected investment patterns nationwide, and the specific local effects of the city's tourism-economy contraction. The Inlet was not unusual in its decline. It was a neighborhood whose decline had been more visible and more concentrated than some other parts of the city.
The casino era and the redevelopment decisions
The 1976 casino referendum and the subsequent property development reshaped the Inlet substantially. Several of the early casino properties were proposed for sites in or adjacent to the Inlet, and the redevelopment decisions made across the late 1970s and early 1980s effectively determined what the contemporary Inlet would be.
The principal redevelopment effects involved the assembly of large parcels for casino-property construction, with displacement of pre-existing residential and commercial uses on the assembled parcels. The displacement was carried out through a mix of voluntary acquisitions, eminent domain proceedings, and the broader market effects of the casino-development pressure on neighborhood property values. The displacement was contested politically through the period, with substantial advocacy work by neighborhood organizations attempting to limit the scope of the redevelopment or to negotiate replacement housing and commercial commitments.
The replacement housing commitments that resulted from the casino-era redevelopment were partial. Some replacement housing was built, principally through the CRDA framework that the casino legislation had established. Other displaced residents and businesses relocated outside the neighborhood without direct replacement support. The cumulative effect was substantial reduction in the residential population of the Inlet and substantial alteration of the commercial fabric.
The contemporary Inlet reflects these redevelopment decisions. Several large casino properties occupy substantial blocks in or adjacent to the neighborhood. The remaining residential blocks are smaller in area and somewhat different in character from the pre-redevelopment fabric. The commercial fabric is sparser than it was before the redevelopment and is concentrated in different locations than the historical commercial concentration.
What the Inlet looks like now
The contemporary Inlet is a neighborhood with a complicated mix of land uses. The casino properties anchor the southern edge of the neighborhood and produce substantial physical and economic effects on the surrounding blocks. The remaining residential blocks include both the surviving older housing stock and several waves of replacement housing built across the post-1980 period through CRDA and other affordable-housing programs.
The commercial fabric is small and scattered. Several long-standing restaurants and bars continue to operate, including establishments that have been in the neighborhood across multiple ownership generations. The small-scale retail that defined the historical commercial fabric is largely absent from the contemporary neighborhood, with the casino-era retail patterns having drawn most of the new commercial investment to the central casino-district blocks rather than to the Inlet.
The waterfront has continued to operate as a working channel with reduced but continuing activity. The fishing fleet is smaller than in earlier decades but continues to land catches at the Inlet docks. The boat-related services continue at reduced scale. The waterfront retains the working character that has been a feature of the neighborhood across its history, though the scale of the working activity is substantially reduced from the historical peak.
The residential community in the contemporary Inlet is a continuation of the multi-ethnic, working-class character of the historical neighborhood, with the demographic composition having shifted across the decades but with the broader character maintained. The community organizations that have operated in the neighborhood across the post-1980 period continue to provide the social infrastructure that supports the residential community.
The 2012 storm and the recovery
Superstorm Sandy in October 2012 affected the Inlet substantially. The storm surge and flooding affected significant areas of the neighborhood, with several blocks experiencing substantial damage to housing stock and to commercial properties. The recovery work in the neighborhood was extensive and continued across multiple years following the storm.
The recovery work was funded through a combination of federal disaster-recovery programs, state assistance, and private insurance recoveries. The work proceeded unevenly across the neighborhood, with some blocks recovering relatively quickly and others experiencing prolonged recovery timelines. Some pre-storm structures were not rebuilt, with the damaged sites remaining vacant or being converted to other uses.
The broader resilience question that the storm posed has continued to shape neighborhood-level decisions across the post-Sandy period. Flood-zone elevation requirements have been updated, with implications for what new construction in the neighborhood can look like and what cost premiums are involved. The relationship between the neighborhood and the inlet itself has been affected, with continuing engineering work on the inlet jetties and on the related coastal-protection infrastructure.
What the future may hold
The contemporary trajectory of the Inlet is uncertain in ways that reflect the broader uncertainty of Atlantic City's economic and physical future. The casino properties that anchor the neighborhood continue to operate at the post-2014 stabilized level. The redevelopment proposals that periodically circulate for various Inlet sites have variable status. The residential community continues, though the scale and composition continue to evolve.
The neighborhood retains the structural features that have defined it across its history — the location at the northern tip of the city, the relationship to the working waterfront, the multi-ethnic working-class residential character, and the continuing role as a place where Atlantic City's several histories overlap visibly. Those features will probably continue to shape what the Inlet is across whatever future the city's broader trajectory produces.
The Inlet is a particular few blocks of Atlantic City whose history is more complicated than the contemporary appearance suggests and whose continued existence is the result of specific decisions and specific community continuity across more than a century. Understanding what the neighborhood has been and what it is now is part of understanding the city. The history is worth recording. The community is worth taking seriously. The future will continue to be worked out through the same combination of community effort, investment decisions, and the broader regional dynamics that have shaped the neighborhood across its long and continuing existence.
