The Atlantic City Convention Center opened May 1, 1997, replacing the older Atlantic City Convention Hall (now known as Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall) as the city's primary venue for large-scale conferences and trade shows. The new center contains five exhibit halls totaling 500,000 square feet of show space, forty-five meeting rooms covering an additional 109,000 square feet, a parking garage with 1,400 spaces, and a direct connection to the Atlantic City Rail Terminal that brings New Jersey Transit's Atlantic City Line from Philadelphia directly into the building's lower level. The main lobby sits inside a ninety-foot-high atrium lit by skylights. The whole complex was built as part of a larger gateway redevelopment project that also produced the Tanger Outlets shopping district called The Walk and the Grand Boulevard streetscape. The aim was to give Atlantic City a non-casino business attraction that could fill rooms midweek when the casinos struggled.

The design firm Wallace, Roberts and Todd - a Philadelphia-based landscape and urban planning firm known for green city design - drew up the original plans. The senior architect on the project was Gilbert Rosenthal, a principal at the firm. The building was designed to reflect its oceanside location. Wave-inspired patterns run through the carpet. A bar inside the convention center is themed around the rocky beach, finished with materials meant to evoke surf-worn stone. The ninety-foot skylit atrium pulls daylight deep into the building. The convention center sits on the bay side of Atlantic City rather than the ocean side, which means most of its visitors arrive without ever seeing the Atlantic itself - the boardwalk and the casinos are roughly a mile to the southeast, and the trip between them is most easily done by jitney or taxi.

The Miss America pageant moved from its longtime home at Boardwalk Hall to the Convention Center in 1997, and the new facility was built partly to host the broadcast. Bert Parks had been the pageant's host from 1955 through 1979, twenty-five consecutive years of him singing "There She Is" at the crowning of each new winner. He died in 1992 - five years before the Convention Center opened. The statue with the singing crown was unveiled as a tribute. The pageant left Atlantic City in 2006, moved to Las Vegas, and then bounced around the country before returning to Atlantic City in 2013 and then leaving again in 2019. The statue remained. The voice still plays when you tap the crown.

The exhibit halls have hosted everything that fits inside 500,000 square feet, which is a lot. The annual Atlantic City Boat Show fills the floor with hundreds of yachts, sportfishing vessels, and personal watercraft, raised on stands so visitors can walk under them. The Atlantic City International Power Boat Show is its summer counterpart. Various wedding expos and consumer electronics shows rotate through. The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association holds tournaments inside. Religious conventions, medical conferences, and political gatherings each take a turn. The visitor on a busy weekend can stand in the atrium and watch the rail terminal disgorge crowds from Philadelphia who walk directly upstairs into whatever has booked the floor that week.

The most underappreciated feature of the Convention Center is its rail connection. The Atlantic City Rail Terminal sits directly beneath the convention floor, and New Jersey Transit's Atlantic City Line runs hourly trains to Philadelphia's 30th Street Station - a ninety-minute trip with stops along the way. The line replaced the historic West Jersey and Seashore Railroad that once brought the original Atlantic City tourists down from Camden. For convention attendees, the rail terminal means a small percentage of visitors actually arrive without using a car. Most still drive. But the train option exists, and the architecture forces it into the visitor's experience - walk off the train, walk up the escalator, and you are inside the convention floor.