Only if they are smart enuff to prevent Casinos from operating Restaurants, or Hotels.
Could you explain this? I thought Atlantic City
was known for gambling. And Las Vegas allows restaurants and hotels and gets by quite fine.
But, I would say that Atlantic City (and Galveston) has a disadvantage of existing in an area where gambling has to compete with numerous other industries and population centers for state support. This is probably true of a lot of other states as well. While they may be able to keep gambling legal there, it won't draw as much tourism as Las Vegas.
I'm almost thinking there's something about the culture of Nevada ("wild west" permissiveness), plus its low population density, that make it a prime spot for this sort of thing.
Other cities in Nevada would work, so you could easily have Reno-Sparks be the big center while Las Vegas is a smaller city in the south where you can "also" gamble, but whose primary industry is the military. Of course, with the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead (if Hoover Dam gets built) so close, it's going to end up being a popular tourist mecca anyway, and the casinos are almost bound to follow that as long as Nevada allows gambling.
In a world without Mormon settlement in Utah, I could easily see a similar culture to Nevada's growing up in the Salt Lake Valley, also along the trail to the California gold rush. Although SLV has a lot more potential farmland than Las Vegas valley.
How about Phoenix?
Would a city be able to support this sort of industry if the tourism drops substantially for half of the year: Then maybe Juneau or Anchorage. Or, maybe some place in North Dakota or Wyoming?