New Jersey’s Stockton University spent million to buy a closed casino in Atlantic City for a city campus, but it wasn’t its first choice.
According to the local Press of Atlantic City, the university first tried to purchase the closed Atlantic Club casino on the resort Boardwalk, before eventually buying the closed Showboat casino from Caesars Entertainment.
The Showboat purchase has become bogged down in a legal fight with the neighboring Trump Taj Mahal, but initially seemed to be a better deal for the school than the Atlantic Club. The school had offered $23 million for the Atlantic Club, according to a Press review of thousands of e-mails related to the negotiations.
Stockton officials used that offer—as well as the eventual $13.5 million purchase price paid for the Atlantic Club by TJM Properties—to tout the Showboat deal as a better buy to Stockton Board of Trustees.
It’s not clear when the school made its offer for the Atlantic Club or why the property went to a lower bidder.
But the $23 million bid was discussed at a Board meeting in December that ultimately led to the decision to buy Showboat. Then university president Herman Saatkamp touted the Showboat property as having better parking, more rooms and more square footage.
Caesars Entertainment, which had jointly purchased Atlantic Club with Tropicana Entertainment, eventually sold the Atlantic Club in May 2014. E-mails suggest the university then approached TJM about a potential purchase of the property—at least verbally—but no sale was made, according to the Press.
Meanwhile, the Showboat sale remains bogged down after Trump Entertainment invoked a 1988 covenant with Caesars that the Showboat could only be operated as a casino. Stockton officials say they though that the covenant had been settled when they moved to buy the property, but Trump Entertainment objected to having a school so close to their property.
The university is now trying to sell Showboat to developer Glen Straub—who recently bought the closed Revel casino in the city—for $26 million, but there has been no movement on the sale announced.
All parties interested in the sale recently met with Atlantic City Mayor Donald Guardian to possibly end the impasse, but again, no announcements stemmed from the meeting and no information on what was discussed was released.
