Casino never brought the 'PROSPERITY' promised to Atlantic City, never eliminated poverty, never reduced unemployment, never paved the streets with GOLD.
Who is foolish enough to think they're any DIFFERENT?
Please note that CAESARS [formerly Harrah's] sought a Massachusetts location [Suffolk Downs].
CAESARS is up to its neck in debt and the Massachusetts Gambling Commission didn't seem to think that was an issue.
ATLANTIC
CITY - The list of casinos closing or expected to close here just keeps growing.
Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino will likely shut its doors for good in
mid-September.
Trump
Entertainment Resorts told The Associated Press that it expects the casino to
close its doors Sept. 16. No final decision has been made, the company said, but
it “expects that it will terminate the operations of Trump Plaza Hotel and
Casino on or shortly after September 16, 2014.”
Assemblyman
Vince Mazzeo (D., Atlantic) said he and State Sen. Jim Whelan (D., Atlantic)
received a phone call late Friday afternoon from a Trump Plaza lawyer notifying
them about the planned closure. Atlantic County officials also were briefed, he
said.
Trump
Entertainment Resorts told The Associated Press that it expects the casino to
close its doors Sept. 16. No final decision has been made, the company said, but
it “expects that it will terminate the operations of Trump Plaza Hotel and
Casino on or shortly after September 16, 2014.”
Assemblyman
Vince Mazzeo (D., Atlantic) said he and State Sen. Jim Whelan (D., Atlantic)
received a phone call late Friday afternoon from a Trump Plaza lawyer notifying
them about the planned closure. Atlantic County officials also were briefed, he
said.
Mazzeo
said the attorney told him that Trump Plaza management plans to make a formal
announcement and issue 60-day layoff notices to about 1,600 employees
Monday.
“This
is another blow to the casino industry here,” Mazzeo said. “With mid-September
the timing of the closing, it will have a devastating impact on the local
economy.”
Trump
Plaza becomes the fourth casino to close or threaten to close in Atlantic
City since January.
The
Atlantic Club, which employed about 1,700, closed Jan. 13.
Revel
Casino Hotel declared bankruptcy for the second time June 19 and is set to go on
the auction block Aug. 6. Revel owners have said that if the casino does not
fetch a buyer soon, the megacasino will close Sept. 1.
A
week after Revel declared bankruptcy, Showboat Atlantic City announced it would
close Aug. 31. Parent company Caesars Entertainment Inc. said this week that it
was open to selling the casino to help save it from closure.
There
has been speculation for more than a year that Trump Plaza was on the verge of
closing. Like the Atlantic Club, Trump Plaza is one of the city's smallest and
oldest gambling halls — it opened May 26, 1984 — and had difficulty competing
with the bigger casinos in town and in nearby states, including
Pennsylvania.
Bob
McDevitt, president of Unite Here Local 54, the union that represents most
casino workers, led a Boardwalk rally Wednesday to protest Showboat’s planned
closing. McDevitt, who labeled Showboat’s closing “a criminal act” by Caesars
Entertainment since the property was still profitable, could not be reached late
Friday to comment on the latest casino to fall.
Whelan,
a former Atlantic City mayor, expressed his displeasure Friday night.
“I
go from depressed and sad to being angry,” he said. “When these casinos close,
people lose their jobs and their careers. It’s a very sad situation.”
Employees
at Trump Plaza had not been notified Friday of the planned closure, but slot
attendant Stan Jelesnianski, who said he has worked there for 21 years, said
employees had been worried “for a long time.”
“Business
has been slow,” he said.
According
to May 2014 monthly revenues from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement,
the latest monthly data available, Trump Plaza ranked last among the 11 casinos
in total revenue, making $5.2 million.
Of
that total, it generated about $4.6 million from slots, down 19.8 percent from
May 2013. And it took in $660,666 from table games, a decrease of 45.6 percent
from a year ago.
Its
year-to-date total casino revenue of $21.9 million was down 26.7 percent from
the same period a year ago.
Charles
Pinkett, a Boardwalk rolling-chair operator, said the casino has seemed to be on
life support for a while.
“The
people have been talking about how there’s no room service,” he said.
Outside
Trump Plaza, in the center of the Boardwalk on a busy summer evening, the
casino's outdoor eatery was filled with customers and music could be heard from
both nearby Kennedy Plaza and a beach bar.
Mark
and Alice Aronson, dining outside, said they were surprised and saddened to hear
another casino was on the way out. Alice Aronson, a local therapist, said she
had clients from Showboat who were dealing with the pain of the likely
layoffs.
“It’s
a shame,” she said. “This is a good place. I heard Donald Trump is not involved
anymore. I thought maybe he’d fight for it. It seems, one by one, they're not
taking care of their employees.”
Trump
Plaza’s closing would leave one Trump-brand casino in Atlantic City — the Trump
Taj Mahal, between Resorts Casino Atlantic City and the soon-to-close
Showboat.
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