Students at Stockton University held protests against Billionaire Carl Icahn after he was seen as being the driving force behind opposition which has stalled the building of a college campus in the city adjacent of his soon-to-be-acquired Trump Taj Mahal casino.
The protests come after Icahn had already been the target of five separate protest rallies by city casino union workers opposed to his controversial acquisition of the Taj Mahal.
Put simply, Icahn is not a popular guy in Atlantic City right now.
The new fight with Stockton University comes after Trump Entertainment moved to block the school from acquiring the closed Showboat casino—which is adjacent to the Taj Mahal—and converting it into a combination working non-casino hotel and city campus.
Trump Entertainment is trying to enforce a 1988 legal covenant among the Taj Mahal, Showboat and Resorts casinos—which are grouped together on the city’s north Boardwalk—requiring that the Showboat never be used for anything other than “a first-class casino resort.”
Despite the covenant—which amounts to one line in the agreement between the three casino companies—Caesars sold the Showboat to Stockton, themselves adding a covenant that the property not be used as a casino.
Trump officials say they do not want a college campus operating adjacent to their property since students under the age of 21 might try to sneak into their bars and onto their casino floor, exposing the casino to fines.
Trump Entertainment says that it informed Caesars it would enforce the covenant months ago. Stockton officials, however, said they were blind-sided by the covenant, which they thought had been settled.
Legal documents show that the school was aware of the covenant, but felt that Caesars and Trump Entertainment were working on settling the issue.
University officials have said the entire deal could fall through because of the Taj Mahal’s stance, but that seems to have changed to a more hopeful attitude.
University president Herman Saatkamp emerged from a meeting with school trustees last week and said the plan to build the Showboat campus was “looking positive,” but did not go into detail.
Analysis of the covenant by local media outlets, however, show that language in the 1988 agreement may actually allow for other uses of the property as long as it meets current urban renewal plans for the resort. The resort’s city council was ready to approve developments plans for the school before the news of the covenant came out. The university may feel it can challenge the agreement in court.
Whether or not that allows Stockton to proceed, Icahn is taking the blame for the project getting sidetracked.
Icahn is in the process of acquiring Trump Entertainment and the Taj Mahal through bankruptcy. Icahn is swapping $286 million in debt he holds on Trump Entertainment for ownership of the company. While he has pledged to try and keep the Taj Mahal open, he has said he can only do so by cutting health benefits and pension benefits to workers.
That has set off a bitter fight between the investor and the city’s main casino workers union, Local 54 of UNITE HERE. And the union seems only too happy to have angry Stockton students join the fight.
“I want Carl Icahn to know what he’s doing is wrong,” Shannon Herbst, a Stockton senior told the Associated Press. “He has all the money in the world. He thinks this is a game, and it’s not. It’s my education, and my future.”
Students held two protest rallies in the city and have created an online movement dubbed “Save Our StoBoat.”
Icahn said he is not involved in Trump Entertainment’s decisions and the Stockton issue, but union leaders called Icahn “the puppet master” behind Trump Entertainment.
“Local 54 is proud to stand with the students of Stockton against Carl Icahn, who seems to relish the role of school bully,” union president Bob McDevitt told the AP.
Icahn has been firing back at the union is a series of letters to union workers. His latest blames the union and its expensive healthcare and pension systems for the closing of four resort casinos last year.
“Many people I know won’t invest in Atlantic City because of the costs imposed by dealing with this union,” he said. ‘Between the work rules, the health care and the pension fund, everyone knows this union cares more about making a good deal for itself than for its workers or the companies.”
