ATLANTIC CITY — John Geniesse looked up from the video poker machine he was playing Tuesday afternoon at Resorts Atlantic City and described the scene around him in just three words: “It’s pretty dead,” he said glumly.
Geniesse, 63, a longtime Resorts customer from Hamilton Township, Mercer County, was surrounded by row after
This ghost-town-like casino floor was what confronted Dennis Gomes when he walked through the doors Tuesday as the new owner of Atlantic City’s oldest gaming hall. Gomes, the 66-year-old chief executive officer, and his management team are faced with the enormous task of reviving a fading casino in a slumping tourist town and a sluggish economy.
“We’re going to be the most energetic and unique casino in the city,” Gomes confidently predicted just hours after he and financial partner Morris Bailey finalized their purchase of Resorts for $31.5 million.
Their turnaround plan includes rebranding Resorts into a Roaring ’20s theme, refurbishing the hotel rooms, attracting more conventions and introducing an array of entertainment to keep customers coming back, Gomes said.
Resorts long ago lost the luster of being the “in” place in Atlantic City. Gamblers surged into the building when it opened as the East Coast’s first casino on May 26, 1978, but the crowds have thinned in recent years, as illustrated by the quiet gaming floor Tuesday.
“My impression is that they let it go and didn’t put a lot of money into it,” Geniesse said of the former owners, the private real estate investment firm Colony Capital LLC. “It’s been this way for the past few months. It’s pretty empty.”
Across the gaming floor, slots player Rose Contarino sat virtually alone while trying her luck at a 25-cent machine. Contarino, 65, of Wenonah, Gloucester County, said she will give the new owners some time to revitalize Resorts. She urged them to open new restaurants.
“We’re definitely wondering what they will do here,” she said. “If it’s going to be the pits, then we’ll look for somewhere else to go.”
Gomes said he wasn’t particularly concerned about the sparse crowds in early December, normally a slow time of year for every casino in town. But he emphasized that Resorts has to begin filling hotel rooms and packing the casino floor in months to come if it is to survive.
“If we’re walking around here in the middle of July and seeing this, then I would be worried,” he said. “Then it would be doom.”
Over the long haul, Gomes is promising to transform Resorts into more of a “casino resort,” one that has upscale restaurants, entertainment and hotel suites to supplement the action on the gaming floor. Tuesday saw a hint of things to come entertainment-wise — a violinist serenaded guests in the hotel lobby, while a stilt walker shook hands and greeted customers with the words “Welcome to the new Resorts.”
The most dramatic change will be the casino’s makeover with a Roaring ’20s decor. Resorts is being re-themed to capitalize on the national publicity generated by the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire,” which is inspired by Prohibition-era Atlantic City. Customers will have to wait until the New Year’s Eve party before the 1920s-era motif starts showing up, including costumed employees. The retheming is expected to be completed by Memorial Day.
Aaron Gomes, Gomes’ 28-year-old son and the second-in-command as executive vice president of operations, cautioned that the new owners don’t plan to “dump a ton of money” into the casino right away to give it a facelift.
“So it’s not going to be the fanciest place. It’s going to be the friendliest place,” Aaron Gomes said.
The first priority is to stabilize a property that has lost $13.7 million through the first three quarters this year and has seen its gaming revenue plunge 18.2 percent, the biggest decline among Atlantic City’s 11 casino hotels. Bailey, 72, a New York real estate mogul, has pledged a line of credit to make sure Resorts has at least $8 million of cash on hand each day as it ramps up operations.
Acknowledging that the timetable is ambitious, Dennis Gomes hopes Resorts will start turning a profit by the spring and end 2011 in the black. Resorts ranks next to last among the city’s casinos in the amount of gaming revenue it takes in. It has grossed $135.6 million through the first 10 months of 2010, with only Trump Marina Hotel Casino lower at $125.4 million.
Gomes and Bailey bought Resorts from a group of lenders that took control in December 2009 after the casino defaulted on its $360 million mortgage. Colony Capital, which had acquired the property in 2001 for $140 million, surrendered control to lenders and walked away from its investment.
On the financial side, Gomes is lowering Resorts’ labor costs by having employees take pay cuts. Gomes required the existing 2,000 employees to reapply for their jobs under a hiring process that he controlled. He could not immediately say how many workers will be retained, although he estimated the figure at more than 80 percent.
Marlise Siracusa, a veteran cocktail server at Resorts, said Gomes has already energized the casino simply by buying it. Gomes has more than 30 years of experience as a top executive in the Atlantic City and Las Vegas gaming markets.
“He’s on the same level as Steve Wynn,” Siracusa said. “He’s a visionary.”
Siracusa, 49, of Margate, who has worked at Resorts for two decades, said employees believe the casino will recapture its former glory now that it has new ownership.
“We’re going to be No. 1 again,” she predicted.
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