Trump Plaza was ideally located at the end of Atlantic City Expressway-in the middle of the Boardwalk-making it an instant entertainment hub and destination. Yet, the Trump Era also coincided with the best of times for Atlantic City. “But he eventually squandered all of it.” “He started off with a lot of goodwill,” Heneghan says. “Mike Pence just called,” Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small joked, “and he’s not going to stop the implosion.”ĭan Heneghan, who covered the opening of every casino in Atlantic City while he worked as a reporter for the Press of Atlantic City, says Trump came bringing a lot of jobs and hope to the Boardwalk. (The Taj Mahal closed in 2016 year and is now a Hard Rock Casino Trump Marina is now the Golden Nugget.)

He resigned from the company in 2009, and Carl Icahn, who was a bondholder, bought the company out of bankruptcy in 2016. Trump took Trump Plaza public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1995, and by 2004, through a series of maneuvers and self-dealing, he had made more than $200 million while the company, which came to own his Taj Mahal and the Trump Marina, lost $647 million and declared bankruptcy. This money wasn’t going to be gambled at the tables-it went to Donald Trump so he could pay interest payments on a loan. That same year, Fred, Trump’s father, sent a lawyer to the Taj in Atlantic City to purchase $3.5 million in chips. “The possibility of a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization is not out of the question.” , one New Jersey regulator said at the time that the would-be president’s business was in a precarious position.

As Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander writes in his book about Trump, White House, Inc. To fund his vision of opulence in Atlantic City, which eventually included the Taj Mahal, which opened in 1990 and the Trump Marina, which was first dubbed Trump Castle and opened in 1985, Trump raised $675 million in bonds.īy 1990, the Trump Organization had amassed $3.4 billion in debt, straining the entire company. In 1984, Donald Trump opened the Trump Plaza, which at the time was a joint operation with Harrah’s running the casino. Ringmaster: In the early years of Trump Plaza, Donald Trump (with Sugar Ray Leonard and Don King) hosted many heavyweight fights as well as two WrestleManias.

Center stage union plaza casino