Day One of the new Resorts Atlantic City looked a lot like most of the other days that preceded it in recent years: a quiet
Dennis Gomes and his management team took control on Tuesday of the nation's first casino to open outside Nevada and quickly saw what they were up against. The casino was virtually devoid of gamblers.
And although a Tuesday afternoon three weeks before Christmas is not an optimal time for any casino, Gomes knows Job One is to put more fannies on more stools in front of slot machines and more money on the green felt of table games if he is to succeed where his predecessors failed.
"The first two weeks of December in every casino I've ever operated — and I've operated 14 of them — the feeling is overwhelming doom," Gomes said with a laugh just off a casino floor that was mostly quiet and virtually devoid of the smell of cigarettes that permeates most other gambling halls. "I'm not worried about these two weeks. If we're walking around here in the middle of July and seeing this, then I'll be worried."
He and New York developer Morris Bailey bought the struggling casino for $31.5 million in a deal that closed late Monday night. It was by far the lowest price ever paid for a casino in New Jersey — and with good reason.
Resorts came perilously close to closing in recent weeks when the casino nearly ran out of cash. It had been owned for the past year by a consortium of lenders who took control of it after the previous owner, Los Angeles hedge fund Colony Capital LLC, stopped paying its mortgage.
It ranks near the bottom of Atlantic City's 11 casinos in terms of revenue and profitability; indeed, Resorts posted 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 city's top-earning casino, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, averaged more than $1.8 million a day the same month.
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