Trump Taj Mahal Casino Closing
- Jul 22, 2018 We visited Atlantic City for a 1 day trip. We visited Taj Casino and Hotel, didn't stay there so I cannot comment on the hotel rooms but the Casino was pretty much comparable to the Vegas casinos. However, cleanliness was a question!! Overall, a nice place to visit if you are in.
- After the second presidential debate, the Atlantic City casino Donald opened 21 years ago, Trump Taj Mahal, is officially shutting.
- The Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City shut its doors Oct. 10, weeks away from the presidential election, reported The Associated Press. The casino opened in 1990 after poker became legal in New.
Trump Taj Mahal closes after 26 years in Atlantic City Donald Trump opened the Trump Taj Mahal casino 26 years ago. But his friend and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn closed it Monday morning.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The owner of the struggling Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort filed court papers on Friday saying it will close next month, making it the fifth of the city's 12 casinos to shut down this year.
In filing a revised reorganization plan in Delaware bankruptcy court, Trump Entertainment Resorts said its board has approved a shutdown of the casino by Dec. 12. It had threatened to close by then if its main union didn't drop its appeal of a court-ordered cost-savings package.
The company said the closing will happen because it has not received the state and local tax breaks it sought in a bid to keep the Taj Mahal open. It advised New Jersey's Division of Gaming Enforcement of its intention to wind down operations of the Taj Mahal and to close it on or about Dec. 12.
'The debtors have initiated appropriate steps to cease operations at the Taj Mahal consistent with that time frame,' Trump Entertainment attorneys wrote.
Company officials declined to comment Friday afternoon.
With the union appealing a bankruptcy court order terminating its collective bargaining agreement and the company's pension funding obligations and New Jersey officials refusing to grant tax concessions, the Taj Mahal's 3,000 workers will soon join some 8,000 other Atlantic City casino workers who have lost their jobs this year.
Mayor Don Guardian said he knows this is a difficult time for all the people who'll be out of work.
'I want them to know that the city of Atlantic City did everything they could to help keep the Trump Taj Mahal open,' he said. 'However, (the company and its officials) still must pay their fair share of taxes, just like our residents do.'
Trump Entertainment is pursuing a longshot plan to let billionaire investor Carl Icahn exchange $286 million in debt for ownership of the company. He would invest $100 million into it, but only if the company gets $175 million in state and local tax breaks.
Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54 of the Unite-HERE casino workers union, faulted Icahn's attempt to acquire the Taj Mahal.
'We are all waiting for Mr. Icahn to step up and become part of the solution and stop pointing fingers, threatening and demanding,' he said. 'For once maybe he could do the right thing instead of trying to bully everyone.'
Icahn has said the union is accusing him of trying to take advantage of the company's situation even though no one else was willing to invest a dollar in it.
Atlantic City has been caught in an eight-year downward spiral caused mainly by the proliferation of casinos in neighboring states.
When the first Pennsylvania casino opened in late 2006, Atlantic City's annual casino revenues were $5.2 billion. Last year they were $2.86 billion, and they will be significantly less than that this year.
A panel appointed by Gov. Chris Christie is recommending ways to help the city and its remaining casinos, including tax relief, additional aid and an emergency manager to help tame the city's finances.
Meanwhile, Trump Entertainment's committee of unsecured creditors asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross in Wilmington, Delaware, to terminate the company's exclusive right as a debtor to file a reorganization plan so the committee could file its own liquidation plan. A hearing on the request for an alternate plan is scheduled for Dec. 4, about a week before the casino is to close.
The Trump Taj Mahal is Trump Entertainment's last casino. It used to own two others: It sold the Trump Marina to Texas-based Landry's Inc., which converted it into the Golden Nugget, and it closed the Trump Plaza on Sept. 16.
AP Business Writer Randall Chase reported from Wilmington, Del.
Donald Trump called it the Eighth Wonder of the World. Now it's just another failed Atlantic City casino.
The Trump Taj Mahal finally closed its doors just before 6 a.m. Monday.
The last guests at the hotel checked out on Sunday, and some of the last gamblers at the casino were cashing in their chips while its namesake was debating Hillary Clinton, facing his own increasingly long odds.
Trump himself no longer owned anything more than the name attached to the Taj's grandiose neon minarets. In its last days, the casino was controlled by the financier Carl Icahn.
Trump Taj Mahal Casino Atlantic City Closing
Icahn called it a 'sad day for Atlantic City' and for the 3,000 workers at the Taj. But he said he couldn't reach an agreement with striking union workers and could no longer run the casino without hemorrhaging money.
The union, representing about 1,000 of the Taj's workers, reached deals with four other casinos in the city just before the Independence Day weekend, including another casino owned by Icahn. But Taj workers went on strike July 1.
'Despite our best efforts, which included losing almost $350 million over just a few short years, we were unable to save the Taj Mahal,' Icahn said in a statement Monday.
The Trump Taj Mahal had been in trouble for years, along with the rest of cash-strapped Atlantic City, where five casinos have closed since 2014, including Trump Plaza. Of the seven that remain, two, Bally's and Caesar's, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The Taj opened in April 1990 and had financial problems almost immediately, according to an analysis by CNN of documents Trump filed with state gaming authorities.
Trump financed it with junk bonds and could not cover their payments with profits from the gaming operations. On four of the Taj's first 16 days of operation, its bank account contained less than $0, with deficits as deep as $1.7 million, according to a New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement report from 1990.
The state approved a $65 million bailout in 1990 because of fears that closing it would cripple the Atlantic City economy. The Taj filed for bankruptcy the next year, allowing it to shed hundreds of millions in debt. It was the first of four trips through bankruptcy court for Trump's casino operations.
Even after reorganization, the Taj continued to struggle with debt payments, posting net losses of $121 million between 1992 and 1995, according to company filings with the SEC. The company turned an operating profit all four years but ended up in the red because of interest payments.
The Taj was included in bankruptcy filings in 2004 and again in 2009. Trump gave up his CEO position in the 2004 bankruptcy. He unloaded the casino in the 2009 reorganization but continued to lease his name to Trump Entertainment Resorts, the company that ran the Taj and Trump Plaza.
And Trump, the man, eventually sued Trump, the company, to try to take his name off the casinos. Freerolls poker club. He complained in his lawsuit that the Taj and Trump Plaza had been allowed 'to fall into an utter state of disrepair' and were unworthy of his 'superior reputation.'
'We have a very high standard,' Trump told CNNMoney in 2014. 'And they didn't meet it.'
Trump Taj Mahal Casino Closing
-- CNN's Lorenzo Ferrigno, Brian Vitagliano and Amanda Wills contributed to this report