Borgata president one of few Black women to run a US casino

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Melonie Johnson is making history as the first Black woman to hold the title of president of an Atlantic City casino, and she's one of only a small handful of women with such a job nationwide.

But right now, she's dealing with a different sort of history-making challenge: Restarting Atlantic City's top-performing casino in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic that has upended the gambling industry, and much of life itself.

“The biggest challenge is opening under this environment,” she said in an interview in the virtually empty casino this week.

Johnson spoke just 30 minutes before New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy did an about-face and canceled indoor dining, while banning smoking and the consumption of all beverages — alcohol included — on casino floors.

That prompted Borgata's parent company, MGM Resorts International, to drop its plan to reopen this week, the only one of Atlantic City's nine casinos to do so. MGM said it could not offer guests the kind of experience they have become accustomed to under the current restrictions and has not announced a target date to reopen.

The Borgata had planned to do an invitation-only “soft opening” for its first few days, which would have started Thursday. On Monday July 6, doors were to be thrown open to the general public. Now, it's anyone's guess when the casino might reopen.

Johnson arrived at Borgata a month ago during the virus shutdown from MGM's National Harbor casino outside Washington, DC, as part of a nationwide management restructuring.

She takes over the dominant casino in Atlantic City. Borgata won nearly $800 million from gamblers last year, more than twice what its nearest competitors did. That was an increase of 3.5% over its performance in 2018.

Johnson is one of a small...