It seems that developer Neil Rodin never followed up on his agreement to buy the Boyd from owner Live Nation. In the “backing out of deals” sweepstakes closer to home, the on-again, off-again saga for the purchase and renovation of the Boyd Theater is evidently off again. Guess a vacant lot is better than anything. What do you do with a shuttered and abandoned hotel and casino that no one wants to buy? Atlantic City has decided, in the case of the Trump Plaza, to implode the thing. There is a ray of hope on the Boardwalk, as the sale of the Caesars’-owned Showboat Hotel and Casino to Richard Stockton College-inferred in this space last month-has been finalized. If someone doesn’t pay the freight, the utility folk have threatened to literally pull the plug, which would be disastrous for Revel. The utility company responsible for keeping electric, heating, cooling and water running at the shuttered facility just defaulted on their December payment. This could be a problem for the physical venue itself. Additionally, he wants nothing to do with paying outstanding utility bills. Straub is interested and has talked vaguely of turning Revel into an institution of higher learning/think tank type of operation, but he’s looking for something in the neighborhood of an $8 million break on his bid, claiming he wasn’t treated fairly in the initial bidding war against Brookfield. “Plan B” is that Revel has gone back to investor Glenn Straub, second highest bidder for the facility at $95.4 million. Evidently, Brookfield wanted out badly, as they didn’t mind losing their $11 million deposit. Seems that high bidder Brookfield Associates didn’t read the fine print about having to pay some of the costs associated with Revel’s utility plant. The deal to purchase the shuttered behemoth called Revel is officially off. He promises a $100 million in additional investment if he gets the tax breaks he wants from the state of New Jersey. The last “big news” to be reported was this: Though a deal between the Taj investor Carl Icahn and the casino workers union fell apart at the 11th hour, Ichan will ante up $20 million to keep the venue open, at least for awhile. Things are changing at Atlantic City’s troubled Taj Mahal Hotel/Casino seemingly by the minute. Happy 2015 to the readers of “Backstage with Bruce Klauber,” celebrating 30 years of continuous publication.
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