Well, now we know how much Hard Rock International paid for Trump Taj Mahal — and why Carl Icahn wanted to keep it a secret. The defunct casino changed hands for $50 million, well below the nine-
figure sum Icahn was seeking. It’s a triumph for Hard Rock CEO Jim Allen, who clearly drove a hard bargain and who probably was able to finance the steal of a deal out of cash flow. For those of you keeping score, Allen paid $0.04 on the dollar for a complex that cost Donald Trump $1.2 billion to construct. That’ll leave plenty of money for Allen’s planned $375 million renovation of the property into a Hard Rock-branded casino. While we’re skeptical about Revel/Ten, which is losing valuable time in a quixotic court battle, Allen has the Midas touch and we’d be willing to bet that he could succeed where Trump and, later, Marc Lasry failed. None of that Bob Griffin cheapskating, to be sure.
As for Icahn, he’s still making good money down at the Tropicana Atlantic City. We don’t think he’s going away anytime soon. Besides, he still has to find somebody — anybody — to take Trump Plaza off his hands. That’s the real challenge.
* That now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t renovation of Sands Bethlehem is in the “off” setting again. Bethlehem Mayor Robert Donchez attributes the freeze to an impending sale to MGM Resorts International. This means, for instance, that poker players will have to continue to content themselves with a handful of tables randomly plunked in the middle of the casino floor. There’s also no place to put 
the 380 slots and 81 tables that were earmarked for the expansion. (A sad day for the manufacturing sector, surely.) It also means that 250 potential new jobs are in abeyance. “We approved their building permits. But they never came to pick them up,” reported Community & Economic Development Director Alicia Garner.
Having overspent on the facility ($800 million), Sheldon Adelson has always been ambivalent about its place in the Las Vegas Sands portfolio. (Both Sands and MGM have entered a “quiet period,” a sure sign that a sale is being negotiated.) As such, Sands has been slow to 
keep its promises to Bethlehem and never did construct the museum it said it would. (I never believed they’d make good on that promise.) Since the sale process could drag on into September we daren’t get our hopes too high for a dramatic revelation, partly due the slowness with which the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board processes license transfers. Says a realistic Donchez, I’m guessing this could take the rest of 2017.” To give him his due, Adelson made a success of Sands Bethlehem. Think of the catastrophe that would have ensued had the state chosen the bid of Columbia Sussex, quick-and-dirty personified.
