{"id":18615,"date":"2016-08-04T09:34:11","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T17:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=18615"},"modified":"2022-08-31T06:45:50","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T14:45:50","slug":"trump-taj-eveybody-loses-mixed-bag-for-boyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/trump-taj-eveybody-loses-mixed-bag-for-boyd\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Taj: Everybody loses; Mixed bag for Boyd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labor Day weekend will be the final hurrah<\/a> for Trump Taj Mahal<\/strong>. Owner Carl Icahn<\/strong> has expressed his intent to close the struggling casino rather than continue to negotiate with \"trump-tajstriking Unite-Here Local 54<\/strong>. “\u201cI would never have thought Carl Icahn was so one-dimensional … For a few million bucks, he could have had labor peace and a content workforce,” Local 54 President Robert McDevitt<\/strong> said, “but instead he’d rather slam the door shut on these long-term workers just to punish them and attempt to break their strike.There was no element of trying to reach an agreement here on Icahn\u2019s part; it was always ‘my way or the highway’ from the beginning with Icahn.” In a written statement, Tropicana Entertainment<\/strong> CEO Anthony Rodio<\/strong> fired back, writing, “Our directors cannot just allow the Taj to continue burning through tens of millions of dollars when the Union has single-handedly blocked any path to profitability.” Rodio\u00a0added that Tropicana “has lost almost $100 million trying to save the Taj when no other party, including the prior equity owners who put it into its recent bankruptcy, was willing to invest even one dollar to save it.\u00a0Currently the Taj is losing multimillions a month, and now with this strike, we see no path to profitability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing is especially infelicitous, as the strike had hit just when Rodio’s improvement campaign was yielding better revenue at the Taj. (Hard as it is to believe now, this was once the market’s highest-grossing casino<\/a>.) Still, as the Wall Street Journal<\/em> notes, its workers are some of Atlantic City’s lowest-paid, averaging $12 an hour, so they could hardly be expected to sign on to a diminished health-and-benefit package in return for Rodio’s vague promise to revisit the issue in 18 months.\u00a0Now, Icahn’s fatwa<\/em> will add another 2,100 people<\/a> to Atlantic City<\/strong>‘s unemployment rolls.<\/p>\n

The new Local 54 mantra of staying out “one day longer, one day stronger” now sounds like whistling past the graveyard. Also, Icahn’s move has rendered irrelevant a bill introduced in Trenton<\/strong> to give striking Taj workers state unemployment benefits. Calling Icahn’s decision “monumental,” casino authority Joe Weinert<\/strong> expressed some surprise<\/a> that Tropicana was throwing in the towel so quickly, saying, “Carl Icahn has been a successful operator in multiple markets.\u201d (We should note that he took over the Stratosphere<\/strong> when it was faring far worse than the Taj and made it into a profitable casino.)<\/p>\n

Weinert added, “this was for years the iconic, must-see property in Atlantic City. It was as big as Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s ego.\u00a0So a town that was once Trump City is now Trumpless, in every respect.\u201d Others had mixed views on the future of the Boardwalk. Showboat<\/strong> owner Bart Blatstein<\/strong> opined that the Taj could be successfully reopened — but not by him. Fitch Ratings<\/strong> analyst Alex Bumazhny<\/strong>\u00a0forecast that \u201cwe see another one or two closures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, anyone interested in reviving the Taj faces the problem of what Weinert calls “another white elephant for the city. It’s an enormously large and inefficiently laid-out property.\u00a0It wouldn\u2019t surprise me to see pieces of it reopened and potentially sold and parceled out. It has two large hotel towers and an enormous expanse along along the Boardwalk. For the whole property to continue as a single operation, I just don\u2019t see it.” At this stage, the idea of even a partial Taj reopening seems too improbable to believe.<\/p>\n

* Boyd Gaming<\/strong> executives expressed some disappointment in their 2Q16 results, although cash flow exceeded management forecasts. The downbeat tenor mainly reflected poorer results at Kansas Star<\/strong> (soft market), Par-A-Dice<\/strong> (slot-route competition) and IP Biloxi<\/strong> (new competition and “continued economic weakness in south-central Louisiana<\/strong> [related to depressed oil labor markets],” writes J.P. Morgan<\/strong>‘s Joseph Greff<\/strong>. On the flip side, cash flow in downtown Las Vegas<\/strong> was up 16%, as the Hawaii<\/strong> market continues to come through for Boyd properties, which have cultivated some of the most remarkable loyalty in the gaming business.<\/p>\n

* Churchill Downs<\/strong> is expanding into Maryland<\/strong>, snapping up racino Ocean Downs<\/strong> in tandem with New York<\/strong>-based Saratoga Casino Holdings<\/strong>. The purchase price for the low-grossing harness track has not been disclosed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Labor Day weekend will be the final hurrah for Trump Taj Mahal. Owner Carl Icahn has expressed his intent to close the struggling casino rather than continue to negotiate with striking Unite-Here Local 54. “\u201cI would never have thought Carl … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,60,82,176,42,51,14,144,58,45,84,72,35,21,196],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18615"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31605,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18615\/revisions\/31605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}