In Resorts Casino Hotel's Superstar Theater, a rotating disco ball bathed the crowd of middle-aged women and senior citizens
Around the corner at the buffet, a simulated flash mob dressed as casino workers suddenly appeared, dancing around — and sometimes on — diners' tables while singing OutKast's "Hey Ya!"
These events marked two extremes of an effort aimed at the same goal: to win back business at the nation's first casino to open outside Nevada, one that came within days of closing last winter.
Rebuilding Resorts is proving to be a difficult, expensive proposition, even as it shows initial signs of success. The casino is handing out wads of cash to new customers, its hotel rooms are cheaper than discount motels during the week, and it's entangled in lawsuits with the former owners, a utility company who briefly cut off heat and air conditioning over a half-million-dollar unpaid bill from the old owners, and several cocktail servers who were fired after it was determined they didn't look sexy enough in revealing new costumes Resorts is making them wear.
"It's a great thing to bring additional business in, but you can see how costly it is for us," said Dennis Gomes, the veteran casino executive who bought Resorts with New York real estate magnate Morris Bailey. "The benefit is for the long term. Believe me, it's stressful."
Bottom line: the casino is still losing money, just not as much as before. Gomes predicts Resorts could turn its first monthly profit under his management in July, and expects to break even for the year.
When it opened its doors on May 26, 1978, Resorts became the nation's first casino outside Nevada. For years, it was fantastically profitable. But as more and more casinos opened in Atlantic City — there are now 11 — Resorts' share of the market fell. By the time casinos started opening in the Philadelphia suburbs in late 2006, Resorts was already in a steep decline, an afterthought for all but the bus-riding senior citizen slots player that remains its typical customer.
Gomes has a long career in the casino industry, with management jobs at the Tropicana Casino and resort (where he famously made a tic-tac-toe-playing chicken into a top draw), Trump Taj Mahal Casino and Resort, the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, and Hilton Nevada's properties. And his tenure as Nevada's top casino corruption investigator was chronicled in the 1995 Martin Scorsese film "Casino."
So when Resorts' previous owners, the Los Angeles hedge fund Colony Capital LLC stopped paying their mortgage and turned the casino's keys over to their lenders in 2009, Gomes saw an opportunity where others saw a money pit caught in a death spiral. He and Bailey, who had tried to open a casino in Pennsylvania, bought Resorts for $31.5 million, a fraction of the $140 million Colony paid for it in 2001.
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