Monday, December 23, 2013
Bankrupt Atlantic Club's sale, shutdown approved
"The Tropicana will take the slot machines and table games, while Caesars will get the 800-plus-room hotel. Neither has any interest in operating the business in Atlantic City's now diminished market."
From the start I thought there was something deeply flawed in how gambling was brought to AC. Over time, I wondered why Vegas increasingly reminded me of Atlantic City more than Atlantic City did. Ah, that was the flaw.
Nobody had a vision of how to combine the successful self-contained casino resort concept with the open front gambling hall arcades of downtown Vegas (which were failing) & the entertainment value of the Diving Horse, & crazy sights like Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon shouting "Woo Woo" from the roof of a restaurant, & of course what people love about Jersey from shows like the Sopranos & Boardwalk Empire. To this day people in the Peterstown section of Elizabeth pretend there's no Mafia. It's now part of their tradition. They're expected to act like that. But AC was never that way. AC lost its backdrop of sin & cheap thrills. You went to an island. What you did there really could stay there.
It did work like the Monopoly game for a long time. Whenever a failing casino went up for sale, another corporation or billionaire mogul bought it. Mohican Sun now operates Resorts. A brand new casino was opened a few years ago & was failing from the start, as just about everyone expected. This sale is truly ominous. What can you do with an 800 room hotel & no casino? Warehouse it. For what & for when?
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
"The Tropicana will take the slot machines and table games, while Caesars will get the 800-plus-room hotel. Neither has any interest in operating the business in Atlantic City's now diminished market."
From the start I thought there was something deeply flawed in how gambling was brought to AC. Over time, I wondered why Vegas increasingly reminded me of Atlantic City more than Atlantic City did. Ah, that was the flaw.
Nobody had a vision of how to combine the successful self-contained casino resort concept with the open front gambling hall arcades of downtown Vegas (which were failing) & the entertainment value of the Diving Horse, & crazy sights like Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon shouting "Woo Woo" from the roof of a restaurant, & of course what people love about Jersey from shows like the Sopranos & Boardwalk Empire. To this day people in the Peterstown section of Elizabeth pretend there's no Mafia. It's now part of their tradition. They're expected to act like that. But AC was never that way. AC lost its backdrop of sin & cheap thrills. You went to an island. What you did there really could stay there.
It did work like the Monopoly game for a long time. Whenever a failing casino went up for sale, another corporation or billionaire mogul bought it. Mohican Sun now operates Resorts. A brand new casino was opened a few years ago & was failing from the start, as just about everyone expected. This sale is truly ominous. What can you do with an 800 room hotel & no casino? Warehouse it. For what & for when?
