Long before the Trump name went up on Pennsylvania Avenue, it towered over the Atlantic City Boardwalk. At the end of the 1980s Donald Trump controlled three of the city's dozen casinos. Understanding that era helps explain both the ambition and the debate that came with the Old Post Office hotel.
Atlantic City opens the doors
New Jersey voters approved casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1976, and the first casino, Resorts International, opened in a converted historic hotel in 1978 (we tell that story in historic hotels turned casino resorts). For a decade Atlantic City was the only legal casino market in the eastern United States, and developers rushed to the Boardwalk.
Trump Plaza, 1984
Trump's first casino opened in 1984 on the Boardwalk at the end of the Atlantic City Expressway, in partnership with Harrah's and its parent Holiday Inns. Within two years he bought out his partners and renamed it Trump Plaza. It was a high-rise hotel-casino aimed at the premium end of the market and, for a time, one of the city's busiest. It closed in 2014, and the empty tower was imploded in February 2021.
Trump's Castle, 1985
In 1985 Trump bought a nearly finished Hilton casino in the Marina district after Hilton failed to win its New Jersey licence. It opened as Trump's Castle and was later renamed Trump Marina. In 2011 it was sold to Landry's and became the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, the name it still carries.
The Taj Mahal, 1990
The biggest bet was the Taj Mahal, a project begun by Resorts International and taken over by Trump in the late 1980s. With minarets, onion domes and chandeliers, it opened in April 1990 as one of the largest casinos in the world, at a reported cost of about a billion dollars, much of it financed with high-interest bonds. Revenue fell short of what the debt required, and in 1991 the Taj went through a prepackaged bankruptcy that cut Trump's stake. The Plaza and the Castle restructured their debts soon afterwards.
The public company years
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1995 | Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts goes public on the New York Stock Exchange |
| 2004 | The company files for bankruptcy protection and restructures |
| 2009 | Successor company Trump Entertainment Resorts files again; Trump steps back from management |
| 2014 | Trump Entertainment Resorts files a further time; Trump Plaza closes |
| 2016 | The investor Carl Icahn takes control; the Taj Mahal closes in October after a long strike |
Trump argued throughout that he had used bankruptcy law as a business tool, and that his personal exposure had been limited after the early 1990s. Critics pointed to bondholders, contractors and workers who lost out. Both points are part of the record.
The Hard Rock era
In 2017 Hard Rock International and partners bought the closed Taj Mahal, reportedly for a fraction of its construction cost. After a renovation that removed the minarets and domes, it reopened in June 2018 as the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City. It has since become one of the city's top-earning casinos, with a large casino floor, poker room and sportsbook. The former Castle trades as the Golden Nugget; the Plaza site is cleared land.
The three casinos today
- Trump Plaza (1984)
- Closed 2014, imploded 2021
- Trump's Castle / Trump Marina (1985)
- Golden Nugget Atlantic City since 2011
- Trump Taj Mahal (1990)
- Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City since 2018
From the Boardwalk to Pennsylvania Avenue
Many of the themes of the Atlantic City years returned in Washington: grand historic-style interiors, heavy borrowing, a powerful brand and constant publicity. The difference was that the Old Post Office had no casino. The District of Columbia has never licensed one, as our guide to Washington DC and gambling explains. For a short trip that pairs Atlantic City-style gaming with Washington history, see our DC weekend itinerary.