'It's beautiful,' she said of the resort. Immediately after entering the casino, she sat at the first slot machine on the casino floor, fed it some money, pushed a button and won seven free spins. Lorraine Capers may have been the first winner at the slot machines once Revel opened. 'They need to knock down all the crap halls and build more places like this,' he said. 'If we can do that, then I'm not worried. 'The real issue is: Can you maintain the interest and the excitement?' DeSanctis said. So they set out to build something that was not just a casino but a true destination resort. 'He said, 'The last thing Atlantic City needs right now is a new casino,'' recalled Garrity, who is now Revel's chief investment officer. Yet sitting on that dirt pile, DeSanctis, Revel's CEO, was already thinking several years ahead. The economy was humming along and Atlantic City's casino revenues were at their height.

Morgan Stanley, Garrity's Wall Street investment firm, had just lined up land for what would become Revel. Michael Garrity recalls sitting on a pile of dirt at the end of the Atlantic City Boardwalk in 2006 with Kevin DeSanctis, a former New Jersey state trooper and casino executive. Given that, Atlantic City is trying to remake itself into a place where gourmet restaurants, top-name concerts, spas and luxurious hotel rooms are just as important as slot machines and cards.

Gambling revenue has fallen from $5.2 billion in 2006 to $3.3 billion last year. It's in keeping with the new thinking in Atlantic City, the nation's second-largest gambling market that has taken a pounding over the last five years from the recession and a slew of new casinos popping up all around it in neighbouring states. Revel is marketing itself as a lifestyle resort, a vacation and meeting mecca that just happens to offer casino gambling as well. That's also what officials from the shore to Trenton are counting on.

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