The Shore: Beauty and the Boardwalk

Bashaw likes to draw during the many meetings he attends. One image he uses to describe the current Atlantic City is a pipeline, with lots of stuff going on underground and little visible above the surface. Whether he will be around to see any of his grand ideas move aboveground is a pressing question. Though McGreevey’s replacement, Governor Richard Codey, kept Bashaw on, he has heard nothing from either of the candidates in the November gubernatorial election.

Senator Bill Gormley won’t speculate on Bashaw’s future with CRDA. But, he says, “He’s done a wonderful job. A great deal depended on his energy and his sincerity on the issues. His commitment is unique.”

Whether Bashaw ultimately decides it was crazy to take the job or not, the thought of leaving doesn’t seem to bother him. He was making more than his current $137,000 state salary when he was a hotelier and real estate developer; he’s stayed active in his development partnership, and is in the midst of another Cape May hotel renovation and an apartment project in Manhattan. He wouldn’t mind getting back to his former life.

“I was successful,” Bashaw says. “I have an apartment in New York, a house in Cape May. It’s a great house; it was in House & Garden.” One night I drove to Cape May with Bashaw, and while he took a yoga class, I checked into the sleek and comfortable Congress Hall. He gave me a quick tour of the hotel, and then we walked to his house, where I met his boyfriend, Will Riccio, who is very cute and much younger, something even the then-closeted Jim McGreevey used to tease Bashaw about. (Bashaw says he and McGreevey keep in touch: “A phone call every 10 days or so — ‘How you doin’?”) We were scheduled to go across the street to dinner in the Ebbitt Room at the Virginia Hotel, where he’d first met the McGreeveys.

When Bashaw offered me a drink, I asked if it would be too much trouble to mix a martini. “Are you kidding?” he said quickly. “I’ll join you.” He made nearly perfect cocktails, and we were sipping them in the kitchen of his beautifully renovated Victorian house. Bashaw had a houseguest, a screenwriter named Holly Sorensen, who told me, “Welcome to Curtasia — that’s what I call it. Curtis just creates this world where everything is wonderful and nice.” If he can do just a little of that in Atlantic City, Curtis Bashaw deserves to be a brand name himself.