ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - The ads were titled "Help Yourself, Help Atlantic City, Help New Jersey," and they made a series of promises, if only voters would pull the "yes" lever to legalize casino gambling.

Having casinos in Atlantic City would "balance taxes, create jobs, boost the economy, and cut down on street crime," the advertisements assured.

Thirty years after singer Steve Lawrence tossed the first dice onto a green felt table to kick off legalized gambling on Memorial Day 1978, there is no question that casinos have transformed Atlantic City into a $5 billion-a-year powerhouse.

But while most of those promises were kept, many of the problems the gambling halls and their billions were intended to address remain.

Casinos created tens of thousands of jobs, a flood of money for state coffers, and put New Jersey on the national map for vacation and gambling junkets. But they also created a sharper divide between the haves and have-nots. Before voters approved casino gambling in 1976, Atlantic City was a poor city struggling with crime, drugs and lack of jobs. Today it has the casinos, but the other problems persist.

"I feel sorry for the people that have been here all their lives and went through 1976, thinking there would be change," said Merceda Gooding, a 40-year-old Atlantic City resident. "It saddens me to see that. In 1976, they said they were going to do all this stuff to help the needs of the Atlantic City residents, and they've fallen short a lot. We don't even have a grocery store here."

Gooding is completing her college degree in business administration and human resources. She wants a white-collar job at a casino, but has found the work available to be much less attractive.

"I wouldn't have a problem getting a job at a casino as long as it's a maid job or washing the tables," she said.

Tom Carver, executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, said casinos delivered on their economic promises, but were never supposed to be saviors.

"Casinos are not government," he said. "Casinos are not schools. Casinos are not anything other than (things that) provide jobs and public money, and they did that galore."

Founded as a health retreat where the salt air was thought to be curative, by 1880 Atlantic City was a full-fledged resort, complete with the nation's first Boardwalk. It gave the world Miss America, salt water taffy and the Monopoly board game.

But by the middle of the 20th century, the resort was fading. The grand hotels were decaying and the advent of air travel put more exotic destinations within reach of tourists who once drove or took the train to Atlantic City.

"You could roll a bowling ball down Pacific Avenue and not hit anybody," said Carver. "The town was nothing. It had no hope, no future, no vision, no anything."

On Nov. 2, 1976, the day President Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, New Jersey voters approved casino gambling by a margin of 200,000 votes out of 2 million cast. Crowds formed on the Boardwalk that night, spontaneously breaking into little parades, and many bars gave away free drinks - perhaps accounting for the little parades.

Work soon began on the first casino, Resorts Atlantic City, which opened on Memorial Day 1978 with a line of people blocks long snaking down the Boardwalk, waiting to get in.

Other casinos soon followed: Caesars Atlantic City and Bally's Atlantic City in 1979, what would become the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort, and Harrah's Atlantic City in 1980, the Tropicana Casino and Resort in 1981. By 2003, when the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa opened, there were 12 gambling houses, although the Sands Casino Hotel closed in 2006.

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