On its opening day in May 1978, people stood in line for hours. Some bought access to buffets they had no intention of eating, because the tickets let them inside the casino early. Cash - more than anyone had ever seen and more than management could imagine - flooded into the counting room, to the point that it took nearly an entire day to tally it.
But casinos soon sprouted
On Wednesday, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission allowed veteran casino executive Dennis Gomes and New York real estate developer Morris Bailey to buy Resorts for the fire-sale price of $31.5 million. The sale is expected to close on Monday.
Resorts had been in danger of closing in recent months when its cash flow ran perilously low. That accounts in part for the price, by far the lowest ever paid for a casino in Atlantic City.
"It's been a long, hard road with a lot of obstacles we had to jump over in order to get here, a lot of stress and a lot of emotion," Gomes said. "But because I wanted to get back into the city so badly, my group and I persisted. To finally get here is a tremendous feeling of satisfaction."
As head of Atlantic City's Tropicana Casino and Resort a few years ago, he pitted a tic-tac-toe-playing chicken against customers and used billboards of Fidel Castro to hype a Cuban-themed shopping and dining mall.
His latest project presents his biggest challenge. Resorts reported a gross operating loss of $2.9 million for the third quarter compared with a gross operating profit of $706,000 a year ago. The casino took in an average of $446,011 a day in October, ranking it 10th out of Atlantic City's 11 casinos. By comparison, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa averaged more than $1.8 million a day the same month.
For the first 10 months of this year, Resorts has taken in $135.5 million, down 18.2 percent from the same period last year.
Gomes plans to rebrand the casino in a "Boardwalk Empire" theme from the HBO series about Prohibition-era Atlantic City. For months, Resorts has been designing and stitching about $1 million worth of 1920s-era costumes for employees.
Among the touches being planned: a strolling violinist in a zoot suit, wandering around the casino floor and lobby, playing songs from the '20s and '30s. Drinks - heavy on the whiskey that was illegal yet plentiful during Prohibition - will be served. Casino floor shows and many singers will stay faithful to the period as well.
"I've spent the last few years running back and forth to Wall Street, and at this point in time, those guys hate Atlantic City," Gomes said Wednesday. "They're completely dead wrong about this city and the potential here."
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