Straub says Revel to reopen in June
Glenn Straub, owner of the Revel casino-hotel in Atlantic City, filed a brief last week in the appeal of his court challenge to the sale by Stockton University of the former Showboat casino-hotel, Revel’s next-door neighbor on the Boardwalk, to Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein.
Straub’s appeal of the sale charges Stockton with failing to live up to its contractual agreement to pursue removal of the former Showboat’s deed restriction, which bans the property from ever being used as a casino. The restriction was placed on the deed by former Showboat owner Caesars Entertainment in a move designed to prevent further competition on the Boardwalk.
According to a report in the Press of Atlantic City, Straub says Stockton had agreed to make an effort to have the restriction removed as a condition of Straub buying the property, and subsequently made no effort to do so, selling the Showboat to Blatstein’s company in January. Blatstein made no objection to the restriction.
“They didn’t act in good faith and therefore they should not have been permitted to sell the property to somebody else,” Straub attorney Stuart Moskovitz told the Press, adding that Straub’s purchase of the Revel’s power plant and the huge fees paid to heat the vacant Revel in winter would not have been necessary had he been able to purchase Showboat and use the neighbor’s utilities.
Straub plans to reopen Revel in June, he said last week in an interview with Forbes. He outlined plans to spend $500,000 to create a theme park-like attraction, complete with ski jumps on an artificial mountain, motocross races and charity mud runs.
“It’s a recreation-based facility along with casinos,” Straub told Forbes. “We’re going to have indoor water parks and a 5,000-seat arena. You’ll be walking 50 feet in the air on cables and rope courses. We’ll have frozen mountains with ski runs and half pipes and motocross tracks. We’ll also have mud runs where we’ll raise $1 million a day for cancer charities. Girls will get dressed in pink tutus and run around on our race track in the mud. Our nightclubs will do a minimum of 2,000 people during the day and 2,000 at nighttime.
“We’re leasing the pier and also 2.5 acres between us and the Showboat casino. We’re doing dressage and jumping and other equestrian events outside in the summertime. Then in the winter we’ll put up big domes the size of football fields that are all heated and we’ll have show jumping, dressage, arena polo, regular polo and rodeos.”
Straub also predicted the investments in Atlantic City being made by he and Tropicana and Trump Taj Mahal owner Carl Icahn will turn the slumping market around.
You need to get down here,” Straub told Forbes. “They tore down over 1,000 houses and they moved everyone who was panhandling out of the city. I’ve committed $500 million and Carl Icahn has committed at least that much. Atlantic City is a perfect place to put money. It’s going to multiply by 10 times what it’s now worth.”
