Next month, an Atlantic City casino is scheduled to be demolished and city officials are planning to turn the demolition event into a fundraiser, aiming to raise more than $1 million. Trump Plaza, and the bidding winner will be able to press and blow up the button.
Fundraiser demolition
The demolition of the gambling facility that closed in 2014 and has since been abandoned, making it easier to demolish than restore. The funds will be raised for the Atlantic City Boys & Girls Club. Demolition work started earlier this year on the property and what remained of the building is expected to be blown up on January 29.
The bidding period is expected to run from Thursday to January 19, and the club, which provides children and adolescents with after-school and summer leisure, educational and career training programs, hired the services of a specialist auction firm to handle the deal, which will end up deciding the winner in a live auction among all top bidders.
Donald Trump, a real-estate developer at the time, opened the casino that sits in a prime location at the Atlantic City Boardwalk in 1984 and hosted a variety of high-caliber boxing matches during its booming years, which the President attended on a regular basis.
Trump’s Atlantic City History
In 2014, Trump Plaza closed doors with 3 other casinos in Atlantic City that also shut down operations. The gaming property sat empty for 6 years after shutting down, resulting in large parts of its façade from one of the hotel towers breaking loose and falling into the ground earlier this year. In another scenario, the rotting foundation of a storm debris fell onto the Boardwalk.
In 2016, Trump's second casino, Taj Mahal, also closed for good, but unlike Trump Plaza, it wasn't left to the decay of time and now serves as the casino of Hard Rock. Trump Marina was sold to Texas billionaire and casino tycoon Tilman Fertitta in 2011 and has been rebranded as the Golden Nugget, the third casino Donald Trump used to own in Atlantic City.
If the Trump Plaza casino is gone, a property will open up, providing an opportunity to create something else and Mayor Small said he was happy to share thoughts with landowner Carl Icahn, who took ownership of the company Trump left out of bankruptcy court in 2016 in 2009.
“Not often does inner-city oceanfront land open up. We have one chance to get this right.”
Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small
Atlantic City casino demolition does not occur every day the last was in 2007 when the former Sands casino was torn down to clear space for another casino complex that never existed.
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