The casinos are closing.
"Newest, brightest Atlantic City casino says it will close" by Charles V. Bagli | New York Times August 13, 2014
NEW YORK — Atlantic City’s ailing casino industry is losing its biggest player.
Revel Casino Hotel, the newest and largest casino in town, will shut down in September, putting more than 3,000 employees out of work, the owner announced Tuesday after failing to find a buyer for the hulking blue-glass tower on the boardwalk.
In this age of economic recovery?
A $2.4 billion hotel and casino, Revel opened 2½ years ago but never turned a profit, so its closing was not unexpected. It will join two other boardwalk casinos that are also scheduled to close soon, the Showboat on Aug. 31 and Trump Plaza on Sept. 16. A fourth, the Atlantic Club, closed in January.
The loss of three casinos in the next few weeks will leave Atlantic City with eight casinos, and an industry that has been battered by competition from small casinos that have opened in Pennsylvania since 2006.
Ronnie Downing, a kitchen steward at Revel who learned Tuesday morning that he would soon be out of a job, said it is a gloomy time for Atlantic City.
Still, he expressed optimism that the city will endure and reinvent itself with a smaller gambling industry, as city and state officials are hoping, as a resort, a shopping mecca, a convention city, and a setting for concerts.
“The future looks dark, but I don’t think it’ll be that way for long,” Downing said. “Atlantic City always finds a way to change and come back.”
Revel AC, the owner of the casino-resort, issued a statement Tuesday saying that the company planned to “cease operations no later than Sept. 10, 2014, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals.” The statement added that the company holds out hope for a sale.
An Air Force veteran, Downing was 18 in 1976 when he voted in his first election, which included a state referendum to legalize casinos as a way to revive the city in which he grew up. He worked at Resorts, the city’s first casino, for 18 years before it was taken over by lenders in 2009.
Downing went to work at Revel shortly after it opened in 2012, thinking “it was the future of Atlantic City.” The owner promoted Revel, unlike other casinos, as a luxury resort whose restaurants and glass walls offered eye-popping views of the beach and the ocean.
My paper and government serve wealth, which is why I'm not gambling on it.
Revel succeeded in attracting a younger generation of visitors to its popular nightclub, called HQ, and beach club — people who were not necessarily coming to Atlantic City to play blackjack or feed the slot machines. But the enormous cost of the property, its vast size, and its peculiar configuration — patrons had to ride a steep escalator from the lobby to get to the casino, the 57-story hotel, and the restaurants — made it difficult to turn a profit.
The owner filed for bankruptcy for a second time in June, saying it hoped to find a buyer. But after reviewing bids on Monday, Revel’s board made a decision to close the doors.
“The casino should’ve never been built,” Alan Woinski of Gaming Industry Weekly Report said. “But it’s the one property that should be saved. It was successful in bringing people to Atlantic City.”
Mayor Don Guardian issued a statement saying he was disappointed in Revel’s decision to close despite having several bidders for the property.
“This might be Revel’s last chapter, but not the last one for this building,” Guardian said. “My administration remains committed to the workers, the businesses, and the visitors who are impacted by today’s news.”
In the short run, the closing of possibly four casinos this year could force the city to raise property taxes again.
Time to get out Atlantic City. It's a Boardwalk Empire!
Vince Mazzeo, a New Jersey state assemblyman whose district includes Atlantic City and nearby towns where many casino workers make their homes, lamented the closing and the resulting loss of jobs.
“Atlantic City has so much potential, and we’ll strive to maximize it,” Mazzeo said in a statement. “Tough economic choices lie ahead, but we’ll face them together, and together we’ll work to bring Atlantic City back to being the premier East Coast destination that it once was.”
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"Atlantic City is in need of a sure bet" by Max Ehrenfreund | Washington Post August 15, 2014
WASHINGTON — The winning streak has run cold for Atlantic City.
Only the 1% are cleaning up.
Earlier this week, the upscale Revel Casino Hotel announced it will close, bringing the total number of casinos in the city expected to close by the end of the year to four. Thousands of workers are confronting unemployment.
The state has long guaranteed Atlantic City a monopoly on gambling within New Jersey’s borders, but gambling revenues there have been declining due to increased competition from new casinos in neighboring states and the lingering effects of the financial crisis. The monthly report from the state Division of Gaming Enforcement issued Wednesday shows that the trend is continuing, as July’s take declined 7.7 percent year over year.
Pennsylvania, which only legalized casino gambling in the past decade, has replaced New Jersey as the state with the second-largest gambling industry. More casinos have been proposed in New York. Yet revenues have been disappointing across the region. In New Jersey, they have declined by about half from a high of $5.2 billion in 2006.
If there were really an economic recovery and not an increasing concentration of wealth at the top.... and now they are coming to Massachusetts. The state is counting on them.
Prepare for some social service cuts next year, fellow citizens.
Most disappointing for investors has been the performance of the casinos’ new online gaming businesses. The prospect of online revenues has kept several casinos open despite declining income.
‘‘A lot of these casinos have been unprofitable for quite some time,’’ said Alex Bumazhny, an analyst at Fitch Ratings.
How long until they need a BAILOUT?
Wasn't Fitch one of the ratings agencies that dealt out toxic MBSs?
Online gamblers haven’t anted up, though, and several casinos have folded. Bumazhny estimates that online gaming revenues for New Jersey businesses will total only around $125 million this year. Revel follows The Atlantic Club, which closed in January, and the Showboat and the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, also expected to close this year.
Bumazhny said that Revel was poorly designed and conceived. The gambling floors were too far from the hotel and the boardwalk. The luxury casino, built for high rollers, lacked the kind of amenities that the typical gambler is accustomed to, notably a buffet. Loyalty programs offered by other Atlantic City casinos discouraged customers from abandoning their old haunts for something new.
New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, had issued a $261 million subsidy to the casino three years ago.
Un-flipping-believable!
In return, the state would receive a fifth of the profits.
And since they never made a profit it was a BAD BET, wasn't it? That's okay. Christie was betting with YOUR MONEY, so he's fine. Where's the next campaign check?
As Josh Barro explained at the time, the subsidy amounted to a kind of equity investment in the casino, funded through a tax credit.
If Revel’s failure comes at taxpayers’ expense, though, the Republican governor doesn’t deserve all the blame. Democrats in the Legislature have also been staunch supporters of gaming in Atlantic City.
That's the kind of biparti$an$hip we are u$ed to!
‘‘There are a heck of a lot of jobs that have been created by the casino industry over the past 35 years. That’s become an important constituency to them,’’ said Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
It's a con$tituency that is dying!
The closures could put a quarter of Atlantic City’s 32,000 casino employees out of work, Joseph Seneca of Rutgers University told The Wall Street Journal.
Ea$y come, ea$y go.
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Better grab as many chips as you can while you can:
"Fired security guard charged in casino heist" by Wayne Parry | Associated Press August 15, 2014
ATLANTIC CITY — A fired casino security guard used his knowledge of when and where large sums of money would change hands to help plan and pull off a daring robbery that netted more than $180,000, authorities said Thursday.
New Jersey State Police said eight people were arrested in connection with the July 21 gunpoint robbery of Caesars Atlantic City. It touched off a three-state manhunt that ended with a Delaware state trooper being shot; a bulletproof vest saved his life.
Izyiah Plummer, 19, of Atlantic City, allegedly pointed a gun at casino employees as he and Aaron Evans, 24, of Pleasantville, grabbed two boxes of cash. They ran to a car driven by Nathaniel Greenlee, 21, of Bear, Del., with passenger Donovan Jackson, 20, of Wilmington, Del., authorities said.
Plummer was a security guard who had been fired two weeks earlier.
Authorities said the suspects appeared to know exactly what they were doing.
‘‘It seems they had intimate knowledge of what would take place,’’ said State Police Captain Christopher Leone. ‘‘They pulled up to a door on a side street not frequently used, and they had detailed knowledge where to look for the money.’’
Plummer and Evans were in and out of the casino within four minutes, Leone said.
Within hours, detectives came up with the name of at least one suspect, aided by a Caesars security guard, Leone added. The two suspects who grabbed the cash wore masks.
All told, authorities have recovered about $150,000 of the stolen cash or merchandise purchased with it, including $50,000 worth of marijuana, high-end jewelry, and clothing.
Detectives arrested Plummer at his home, along with two 19-year-olds from Pleasantville, Monique Kelly and Dwayne Morgan. They seized $43,000 in cash, .38-caliber rounds, and clothing allegedly worn during the crime.
On July 23, Evans and Lance Rogers, 20, of Atlantic City, were arrested. Detectives said Rogers got stolen currency from Plummer. Investigators obtained a search warrant for Evans’s residence and seized more cash and various items.
On Aug. 6, police from New Jersey and Delaware executed a search warrant at Nathaniel Greenlee’s residence in Delaware. When Delaware state troopers breached the front door, Nathaniel Greenlee’s father, John Greenlee, shot one of them, authorities said. He was arrested. The trooper was released from the hospital that day.
The same day, detectives discovered Nathaniel Greenlee was employed by a retail store in Concord Township, Pa. They found his car, believed to have been used in the crime, at the store and arrested him.
On Aug. 8, Donavon Jackson, 20, of Wilmington, Del., was arrested at home. Authorities said they found cash and property purchased with proceeds from the crime.
On Aug. 13, Myles Coleman, 23, of Atlantic City, surrendered in Atlantic City. According to detectives, Evans, Greenlee, and Jackson went to Coleman’s residence after the robbery.
Plummer, Evans, Jackson, and Morgan are being held on robbery, assault, and weapons charges. Greenlee is awaiting extradition from Pennsylvania on similar charges. The other three were released with a court date on stolen-property counts.
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Looks like they lost their bet.
