A Sneak Peak at What a North Jersey Casino Could Look Like

A story broke about a week ago about an effort that was gaining momentum to allow casinos in North Jersey. One person's vision for that effort is now out for public consumption and it comes with a $4.6 billion price tag.

The Star-Ledger reports a venture capitalist from New England has been meeting with politicians in the state recently about his plans to build a $4.6 billion -- yes, "billion" with a 'b' -- casino in Jersey City.

We're not talking about a little hotel and some penny slot machines here -- we're talking about a 95-story-tall hotel high-rise, a motor sports complex that would seat over 107,000 people, and just for fun, the world's largest ferris wheel. An estimated 25,000 people would work at this mega-casino.

To put that in perspective, Showboat currently employs about 1/10th of that number and Revel cost half of that before the economy went south. Revel's hotel tower is 57 stories high. The size of the proposed motor sports park is about the same as the number of people that can attend a race at Daytona International Speedway in Florida, home of the Daytona 500.

The man with the plan is Paul Fireman who used to be a big executive at Reebok and now runs a big financial firm in Boston. He's said to be worth about a billion dollars, so he can certainly write a check to the ball rolling, however, it's yet to been seen if such a massive project would ever become reality.

Would a $4.6 billion resort that's within walking distance for millions of people in the New York City area spell disaster for Atlantic City? It's rather difficult to think that it wouldn't be. One thing is rather certain: someone with a billion dollars can put a lot of money into swaying people to vote for casinos outside of our area.