After only a mere two years of existence, the sad, strange saga of Atlantic City's Revel Casino Hotel will finally come to an end. In a shock to no one, the $2.4B glass-castle will officially close up shop on September 10th after the recent attempts to find a buyer in bankruptcy court proved to be unsuccessful. It's gotten so bad for the casino business in Atlantic City that it's started to lag behind Nevada and Pennsylvania as the nation's third largest gambling market. Case in point: three AC casinos — Revel, Trump Plaza and The Showboat — will all shutter this summer and early fall while SugarHouse in Philly is undergoing a $164M expansion, Harrah's Chester wants the SS United States as its floating hotel and another one is in the works. What the future holds for the building uncertain, but 3,100 people are out of a job and Revel can be seen as nothing more than a huge, expensive belly flop alongside the Atlantic Ocean.
Major design flaws could prove to be too costly for Revel to truly recover. According to a Philly.com report from June:
Revel's design faults, according to Woinski and other critics, include a long distance between the casino floor and the hotel's front desk, a casino floor that fails to engage gamblers, and vast empty spaces that make Revel expensive to heat and cool. "Unless you park on the right floor of the garage, so you can walk right into the casino, people don't even know how to get into the casino," said Saverio R. Scheri III, president and chief executive of WhiteSand Gaming L.L.C., a consulting firm with offices in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and overseas.
A major gutting of Revel would not be worth it, Scheri said. "You'll never make that money back," Scheri said. "If somebody picks that property up at $100 million, which is like a nickel on the dollar, that's not a bad deal. You could make money, if you're smart."
What do you think: Can Revel be saved or is it doomed?
· Atlantic City's Revel casino to close in September [Philly.com]
· Experts not enthusiastic about future of Revel [Philly.com]
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