We all saw this one coming. Once the largest casino in the world, and the top-grossing casino in Atlantic City, the Trump Taj Mahal (affectionately referred to by many as ‘the Taj’) will deal its last hand before this year ends.
Of the dozens of casinos to grace Las Vegas East, none of them have had such a turbulent life as the Taj Mahal. Sure casinos have come and gone (Atlantis, Claridge), changed their names and ownership (Atlantic Club, Golden Nugget), and have either been imploded (Sands) or left to rot (Revel). But the Taj Mahal was dragged in the dirt the longest, kicking and screaming the whole way, and soon its tortuous ride will be over.
Controversy has mired the Taj from the very beginning. It was originally conceived as a complement to the neighboring Resorts Hotel and Casino, but hit roadblocks surrounding construction costs and general ownership. A nasty legal battle ensued, and long story short, Donald Trump stepped in, purchasing Taj from Resorts and finished the job, christening his new property as the Trump Taj Mahal. (An obscure reference found to this day of the casino’s change of hands is found in a sign above the valet entrance, reading: Donald Trump Presents the Taj Mahal.)
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| 'Resorts Taj Mahal' under construction. Note the distinct lack of Trump. |
After a lavish grand opening, the Taj Mahal faced some bankruptcy scares behind the scenes, but otherwise projected itself as top dog in Atlantic City. The 90s and early 00s bid well on the Taj Mahal, but Borgata quickly snatched Taj’s crown after opening in 2003, and has proudly worn it ever since. Still, the resort continued to do decently, even adding a second hotel tower in 2006. Come the end of the decade, however, the combination of Trump himself leaving the casino industry and the Great Recession left the Taj’s owners in a challenging position. Trump Entertainment Resorts, the parent company with its connection to Trump in name only, continued to mismanage, lose money, and choose not to re-invest in its three Trump-branded properties in Atlantic City. Trump Marina (née Castle) was sold and renamed to Golden Nugget (now a flourishing resort under its new management), Trump Plaza met a bitter and embarrassing demise in the fall of 2014, and Trump Taj Mahal was actually expected to follow suit later that year, citing a November closing date and then two different December dates.
Ever since its founder’s exit, Trump Entertainment Resorts struggled for years with the local worker’s unions, particularly with Local 54 (aka UNITE HERE!). Now it may be hard for millennials (such as myself) to picture this in today’s job landscape, but even as little as 20 years ago, a position at a major company was designed to set the worker up for life. They would spend 30, 40, even 50 years at this single company (usually in the same exact position), which in return would pay them well, provide adequate insurance benefits, and even <gasp> award you with a pension post-retirement. (Or if the company didn’t do this, they would at least play nice with the worker’s unions that did.) Today in this age of volatile career tracts, Obamacare, and 401(k)s, these job perks are the things of fairy tales, but to a young or even middle-aged worker who landed a job at the hottest new casino in Atlantic City in 1990, these were expected and cherished benefits that would see them through to a retirement in the 2030s. Unfortunately for everyone, these times have definitely changed. With the passing of the Affordable Care Act, a cash-strapped TER decided to slash the benefits of all its employees, whether they had worked there for a few weeks or a few decades. This was understandably the straw that broke the union’s back, and initiated very hostile relations between Taj’s management and the union. Unlike the employees of Trump Plaza who literally had the rug pulled from under them, Taj workers could either accept TER’s new rules (forcing already underpaid workers to accept Obamacare at the expense of their own wallets) or Taj would close as well.
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| December 2014, days before Taj's intended demise. Not a soul to be seen. |
No deal seemed to be made and the casino was gearing up to close just before the Christmas of 2014. They had received the OK to terminate operations from the city and casino commission, and closed one of the hotel towers and prestigious poker room. I decided to book a night on their last Tuesday in operation, and took all the pictures you see from that time. It was depressing and almost pathetic, and I can’t imagine it looking much different than this soon. The resort had essentially run out of money, and all that was left was for the final hands to be dealt, but miraculously in literally the 11th hour… billionaire investor Carl Icahn took on the Taj’s monstrous debt and wealth of issues. The Taj was not going to close! Quite the opposite in fact, with this influx of new money and ownership, the Taj Mahal was going to rise from its ashes!
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| Oh yeah, this is reassuring. |
2015 was an awkward year for the Taj Mahal. A wealth of bad press and mixed messages left the resort in a confused state to the general public: is it open or not? If it isn’t, then why are its lights still on? If it is, why when I type in “Trump Taj Mahal” in Google it finishes the search with “closing”? I thought I saw in the news it was having trouble… Oh but I saw they struck a deal… Wait, Trump is running for president?! …needless to say, nobody was quite sure what was going on, not even the Taj itself. Its occupancy rates and casino earnings were still very disappointing, and the resort itself was still sparsely populated with employees or guests. Local 54 continued to go on its offensive against the management, going so far as projecting “BOYCOTT TAJ” from a spotlight onto the stark white walls of the casino’s parking garage. The Taj Mahal was on life support and nobody seemed to want to be there. The only thing keeping the place from financially collapsing on itself was the ‘donation’ of Icahn’s investment: literally money that fell from the sky.
Then came the burned-out letters.
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| Summer 2015. The sign has devolved to random slashes. |
It’s a bit of an inside joke that the Atlantic City skyline is dominated by casino towers adorned by their property names in bright, red letters. With the exception of Revel, nearly every hotel or casino on the boardwalk proudly proclaims its name the same exact way. “SHOWBOAT.” “BALLYS.” (sic) “C A E S A R S.” “TROPICANA.” The non-casino Atlantic Palace recently updated its signage and intentionally uses blue lettering, self-admitting it wants to stand apart from its peers. The Trump Taj Mahal is absolutely one of those peers, and spells out several “TRUMP”s and “TAJ MAHAL”s in bold red from all four cardinal directions. These signs are essentially red plastic letters backlit by fluorescent tubes, and we all know how fluorescent lights like to buzz and go dim. A good assessment of how a casino in Atlantic City is doing is comically by looking at its signs, as mutilated letters at night show a lack of upkeep and concern. The media had a field day when Trump Plaza closed, as one of its marquees read ashamedly as “_U___ _LAZA.” I once had the misfortune of staying at Bally’s one night with half of its B burned out, effectively reading as “LALLYS.” But these lettering gaffes are swiftly handled, and within a day that B burned bright and majestic (at the expense of the compared dimness of its other letters, but I digress).
The Taj’s letters started to go out that year, one by one, section by section, and apparently Icahn’s money couldn’t quite stretch to bulb maintenance. The Taj Mahal’s already cryptic font choice led to combinations of chiaroscuro that translated to an alien language. “Honey, would you like to stay at the Trump, uh… ToJ M/h^I? Hmm, me either. I wonder if they’re even open, didn’t you read somewhere that…?” And unlike the occasional “SH_WBOAT”s and “LALLYS,” these bulbs remained dead for much longer, if not permanently. It was a darkly humorous yet embarrassing omen for the Taj Mahal as it entered its next year.
2016 started out promising, with Tropicana offering to take it off Icahn’s hands for him. The Tropicana (ironically the southernmost open casino on the boardwalk, Taj is the northernmost) had hit a slump years before, but re-invested and bounced back with a vengeance, and is arguably the most successful and most diverse boardwalk casino in Atlantic City. With Tropicana’s new ownership came the many possibilities of the Taj riding its wave, perhaps merging their loyalty programs, or getting extra revenue to put toward Taj’s upkeep. Casino earnings at the Taj on some months actually rose from the year before, showing promise of a new era. The Taj also started booking more and more high-profile celebrities and venues, and presented itself as a more confident resort than it was the year before. We’re here, we’ve always been open, and we mean business. “Excitement Returns!” There were even signs of possible rebranding, as the Trump name (which TER fought to retain and even paid for when they were already strapped for cash) has been slowly diminishing on official correspondences, and the simple name “TAJ MAHAL” is used in big, branding-type lettering, at a jaunty angle to boot. The first major victory for the unofficially ‘new’ Taj Mahal was the reopening of its poker room. Taj Poker had always had a cult following, even in the resort’s darkest times, so its “Return” earlier this year was much appreciated. Dining “Returned” with the re-opening of the Taj’s signature casino buffet, the Sultan’s Feast. And just mere weeks ago, the Taj was home to a successful Guinness World Record acrobatic attempt, further ushering the “Return” of action and excitement.
What unfortunately didn’t “Return” were the pensions and insurance benefits of its maligned employees.
Local 54 chose to wait in the wings, noticing that the Taj Mahal was setting up for a rebound in services, popularity, and liquid assets. But when it seemed like things from the benefits standpoint were not going to change, the union started an all-out assault. They threatened to strike at five different casinos in Atlantic City starting on July 4, as these benefit dissents were spread all over the town. No doubt going on strike during the city’s busiest weekend would put their discourse in the public eye. On their radar were Tropicana, Caesars, Bally’s, and Harrah’s, just to start. And Taj, oh their old friend the Taj, they had a very special place on their attack list. The first four casinos managed to eke by with compromises that both sides agreed on, and were ultimately spared from the strike. But poor Taj, literally poor Taj, they just couldn’t come to terms, at least not yet. They were too busy trying to have “Guests Return,” “Gamblers Return,” and above all “Maintenance and Fixed Letters Return” than to play the union game. As the fall of 2014 repeated itself, compromising deals were not made and the union started their strike.
To this day, the strike is still ongoing, soon to become one of the longest strikes the city has ever seen. Picketers could be found every hour of the day from July till now, protesting the Taj Mahal and all in charge of it. Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton took advantage of the truly bizarre coincidences and delivered rally speeches in front of the shuttered Trump Plaza, demonizing her opponent whose name is still visible in the labelscars left behind, and also met with strikers up the boardwalk. Ironically the properties prospered the most with Trump actually in control of them, and it’s only because of these subsidiary companies in charge that things deteriorated so badly. Of course, no one will ever realize this, and many of the ones that do will still choose not to believe it.
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| Credit where it's due: this is a very shrewd choice of backdrop. |
As this strike was started to bring about change, today it brought the worst possible kind. Tropicana announced that the strike has bled out the Taj Mahal for the last time, and this now-once-again broke resort will become another boardwalk casualty. Considering this is now the fourth times the Taj Mahal has threatened to close its doors, one can’t help but raise a skeptical eyebrow. Some may almost taunt the Taj, saying “go ahead, do it! I dare you.” But this time it feels definitive. The battered property had been thrown lifelines since before it even opened: first by Trump, then his bankruptcy lawyers (lol), then by Icahn, and finally by Tropicana. The Taj is practically cursed, probably by its very name alone, as the real Taj Mahal in India is essentially a giant tomb.
How many times do you rehabilitate a drug addict before they eventually relapse yet again? Likewise, how many times do you pump money into a giant resort that has always slipped from its footing? Perhaps it’s finally time to let the Taj die. In many ways it is the symbol of Atlantic City’s pure casino era (1978-2007): excessive, overdone, and ultimately full of hot air. With AC being forced into a more diverse direction, these flaws of the past need to be able to be restarted. The Taj takes up an enormous footprint of beachfront land (and no, it’s not just the footprints of its blanched white elephants), and land like that (not saddled with deed restrictions) could be the base for a wealth of new growth. Imagine the new developments of the Hoboken riverfront transplanted onto the Atlantic City boardwalk, and all the good business and people they would bring. New hope, new money, new ideas, and no struggling with the previous tenants of gold sheathed minarets and burned out red letters. If Atlantic City really wants to change, this changing of the guards is exactly where it will start.
Good bye, Trump Taj Mahal. It’s been fun, and I’ve made many memories (and money) with you. But it’s okay for you to go. Your legacy will usher in a better Atlantic City for us all. You’re showing a 20 but we have 21.
Blackjack.
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| Off the AC Expressway just after Plaza's closure. |
