[h=1]Trump Plaza sold for bargain-basement $20 million[/h]10:42p.m. EST February 14, 2013 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Trump Plaza, the Boardwalk centerpiece of Donald Trump's one-time Atlantic City empire, was sold Thursday to a California company for $20 million in the cheapest of a series of bargain-basement deals for distressed gambling halls in the struggling New Jersey seaside resort. The Meruelo Group of Downey, Calif., plans to close the deal by May 31. It is the lowest price ever paid for a casino in Atlantic City. The company, which counts construction, engineering, real estate, food service and private equity among its businesses, also owns the Grand Sierra Resort and casino in Reno, Nevada. Trump Plaza, which cost $210 million to build, opened in May 1984 as one of Donald Trump's pet projects. The real estate mogul has since limited his dealings in Atlantic City. The sale leaves the company he once ran, Trump Entertainment Resorts, with just one casino, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort. The company sold the former Trump Marina to a Texas company that rebranded it as the new Golden Nugget in 2011. Trump Plaza is one of the first casinos many visitors to Atlantic City see. It sits at the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway on the Boardwalk, directly next to Boardwalk Hall, and sometimes markets itself as being in "the center of it all." It stands 39 stories over the Boardwalk, and has 906 hotel rooms, ranking it among the smallest of the city's 12 casinos, the most successful of which have 2,000 or more rooms apiece. Trump Plaza has struggled mightily in recent years, despite its central location. It has become the worst-performing casino in town in terms of casino revenue. Last month, Trump Plaza took in less than $4.9 million, a decline of more than 40 percent from a year ago. For all of last year, Trump Plaza won just over $102 million from gamblers — or about what the city's top casino, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, wins in a good two months. Trump Plaza's winnings for 2012 were down 25 percent from 2011. For the third quarter of last year, the most recent period for which statistics are available, Trump Plaza had a $2.35 million gross operating profit, down nearly 34 percent from the same period in 2011. The sale price was also consistent with the fire-sale prices casinos have been going for lately in Atlantic City. Resorts Casino Hotel sold for $31.5 million in Dec. 2010. Trump Marina Hotel Casino fetched $38 million when it was sold in May 2011 and became the Golden Nugget. Billionaire Carl Icahn bought the Tropicana Casino and resort out of bankruptcy court for $200 million worth of deeply discounted debt; the casino originally went on the market for about $1 billion when its former owners lost their casino license. And The Atlantic City Club Casino Hotel is being bought by the parent company of the PokerStars website site for an as-yet undisclosed sum, which is expected to be a fraction of the $513 million its owners paid for it in 2005. _______________________________________________ I only know Vegas, what are the casinos and hotels like in Atlantic City?
Atlantic City is dying fast. Too many other options, and AC doesn't offer much. The newest hotel, the Revel, is just odd. Freaky "Logan's Run" feel to the inside, and the casino floor sucks in my opinion. Tried to play craps, but the tables were so dark that it was actually rough on my eyes. I don't know what creepy feel they're going for, but you need to see the dice in craps.
Sports gambling could help reinvigorate things. But honestly they need to clean up the surrounding areas and figure out something people would wan to do there on the weekend.
Another Trump disaster. The Trump Plaza would have been bankrupt from day 1 but for the fact he screwed the contractors out of about $35 million of change orders at the end of the job and cash flowed the first year of operations on the backs of those contractors.
Trump Plaza was a success as long as Wrestlemania was held there. Redneck wrestling fans. -Its still real to me! [video=youtube;mvvAlWcs9kI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvvAlWcs9kI[/video]
AC sucks moose cock. Depressing shithole. Borgata is nice but thats it. Revel is like an ep of the twilight zone
Agree 100% with you. Revel is fucking bizarre. Architect and subjects must have been dealing with the Howard/ Emperor has No Clothes syndrome. I'm doing dinner at Old Homestead in Borgata Saturday night. Borgata is the 1 exception to AC except maybe the French Quarter/ Trop experience. Other than those the town SUCKS.
There is nothing else to do in Atlantic City. The boardwalk is awful. You cant walk 2 feet without someone trying to sell you something or trying to rip you off with a ride on one of those push carts. Most of all the people who work there, HATE YOU. They do not want to be there and it is totally not a relaxing/vacation spot. People are there for one thing to gamble and when they lose, they become morons. There are way too many options to gamble rather than Atlantic City.
He could buy several casinos in a few weeks when he wins his appeal and gets his well deserved $330 million. (wow that was very tough to type with so much laughter in my head over the absurdity of Wiggy even remotely winning his appeal)
I could understand what you guys are saying about Atlantic City, I've been going to Vegas since I turned 21 in the 80's. I really loved it, I'm not a hard core gambler but I really liked the food options. I would go with my wife (then girlfriend) a couple times a year in the 90's and the place was great, the hotels were new, clean, and respectable. We could cruise the strip and hit several of the theme hotel casinos in an hour. We've gone again a couple times in the last few years, and I really start to hate the place now, after not going for almost 10 years. The place has turned completely ghetto, scumbags EVERYWHERE and the strip is a solid traffic jam about 20 hours a day. We got a suite in a hotel that we stayed at in the 90's when it was new and the place looked, smelled, and felt like it was 50 years old. The place felt like an inner-city housing project, complete with ethnic types hanging out in the hallways. The people that work in the hotels and restaurants are assholes, and the city is just overrun with trash from So.Cal. that once never considered going there.
