A group of developers and business owners is looking to transform three blocks perpendicular to the Boardwalk into a walkable, millennial playground: South Tennessee Avenue, South New York Avenue and South St. James Place. It’s dubbed the “Orange Loop,” after the orange properties on the Monopoly board.
Properties there had among the lowest median sales prices in Atlantic City despite being within walking distance of the Boardwalk, said former Planning Director Elizabeth Terenik.
In 2015, she asked Rutgers University to come up with a plan for a walkable hub between South Carolina Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Directly in the center of Rutgers’ blueprints was South Tennessee, South St. James, and South New York.
A perception of crime, excess surface parking, boarded-up buildings and “sexually-oriented businesses” could impede development there, according to the Rutgers’ Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy study that also found a staggering 58 percent of the area was asphalt.