By 1996, the CRDA had a lot to report. Over the previous decade, its 1.25 per cent casino ‘win’ proceeds had allowed it to fund a variety of projects in and around Atlantic City. Controversial at times, the CRDA had become a bulwark of expansion by the mid-1990s and had become a central player in the city's accelerated rebuilding programme. The CRDA's support for the new hotel towers sprouting up around town symbolized the new symbiosis between the casino industry, local and state government. They were the physical outcome of the philosophical sea change that occurred in the early 1990s, leading to an explosive synergy between casino executives, state legislators and local officials. As a state agency with voting local and casino representatives, the CRDA was the perfect entity to focus different casino community perspectives to support the original casino mission: Atlantic City's revitalization. Nineteen years into the experiment, redevelopment was all over the place – a huge new Convention Center under construction along with a ‘gateway’ park and lighthouse, new houses all over the uptown Inlet neighbourhood, a new aquarium and retail area under development at Gardner's basin, and a supermarket-anchored plaza in the heart of the city's retail district on Atlantic Avenue. Then there were the new, glistening hotel towers at Caesar's, Harrah's, Trump Plaza and the Tropicana. The CRDA had spent $175 million to help leverage $1.54 billion in casino hotel expansion by 1996, a sometimes controversial investment that had, in fact, been significant in restoring the industry to steady revenue growth.

Meanwhile, the long-lamented city government had launched a massive building campaign in the early 1990s to improve the look and overall functionality of the city. By late 1994, with some CRDA assistance, a new fire and police plaza had been built along with a new Police Athletic League building, the Garden Pier Arts Center, little league baseball fields and the brand new Atlantic City High School.