Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.
ATLANTIC CITY -- The Donald went bust. Borgata boomed. Resorts got bigger. Caesars got swallowed up.
Tropicana threw open the doors to its dazzling but star-crossed expansion project, a $280 million retail-and-entertainment colossus called The Quarter.
"It certainly was a momentous year for Atlantic City," said Joe Weinert, vice president of Spectrum Gaming Group, a casino industry consultant.
It wasn't the ups and downs of the rich or famous that made the biggest news on the Boardwalk in 2004, though.
It was chambermaids, porters and cocktail servers -- the ones who make the beds, carry the bags and deliver the drinks -- who dealt Atlantic City a losing hand, staging a raucous monthlong strike that turned the Boardwalk's pleasure palaces into no-frills hotels where even the high rollers had to eat off paper plates.
The strike, by Local 54 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union, pitted 10,000 front-line employees against the casino industry's biggest names.
Strikers walked picket lines, dealers filled in as waiters and gamblers -- the bread and butter of New Jersey's $4 billion-a-year casino business -- endured little indignities like no room service, dirty bathrooms and unmade beds.
Donald Trump's casinos, which agreed on a contract with the union before the strike began, weren't hit by the strike. But that didn't solve his problems.
Despite the success of "The Apprentice," his reality TV show, his debt-laden casino company, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. The company seeks to reduce its debt by giving more ownership to bond holders.
The dice kept rolling at Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza and Trump Marina, but the casinos continued to lose customers to the booming Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.
The Borgata, a sexy $1 billion casino that opened in 2003 as the first new game in town in more than 10 years, continued to hit it rich.
The 2,010-room hotel's compelling mix of luxurious rooms, celebrity chef restaurants and Las Vegas grandeur lured a younger class of gambler to Atlantic City and proved that there was money to be made on non-gambling amenities.
Other casinos followed suit in 2004, building new beach bars and spicing up their entertainment options in hopes of cashing in with a younger crowd.
Resorts Atlantic City, for example, lined up rapper Snoop Dogg to headline its showroom, a booking unthinkable five years ago when casinos bet on old crooners and nostalgia acts to entertain the silver-haired slot players.
Resorts took steps to spruce up its aging physical plant, too, opening a 28-story hotel tower that added 459 rooms to the property. Its parent company, meanwhile, announced plans to acquire the Atlantic City Hilton casino, which went on the block suddenly because of a merger.
The Hilton became available after Harrah's Entertainment announced a $5 billion takeover of Caesars Entertainment, thanks to New Jersey casino laws aimed at keeping any one casino operator from owning so many properties that it holds "undue economic concentration" over the market.
Harrah's purchase of Caesars would give it control over five of Atlantic City's 12 casinos, so the company agreed to sell the Hilton to appease regulators.
Tropicana Casino & Resort, where four construction workers died in the Oct. 30, 2003, collapse of a parking garage, finally unveiled "The Quarter," its Cuban-themed expansion project.
The Quarter, which opened in late November, is a three-story indoor streetscape featuring 25 stores, an IMAX Theater, nightclubs and big-name restaurants. Tropicana hopes it will contribute to Atlantic City's evolution as something more than a slot machine capital.
Borgata, hoping to parlay its early success into even bigger returns, announced plans to add more casino space, restaurants and nightclubs, in addition to a new 45-story hotel tower.
Those kind of nongambling attractions are key to Atlantic City's survival in 2005 and beyond, given the impending start of slot machine gambling in neighboring Pennsylvania, a key feeder market for Atlantic City casinos.
"The new markets being brought to town by the Borgata and The Quarter will tap into visitors who've never been here or haven't been here in years," said Roger Gros, editor of Global Gaming Business magazine.
"It's a much more optimistic outlook than it was at the end of last year. All these new players are coming to town. There's a true buzz in Atlantic City now about it being a hip place to be, and that's what you need.
"For Atlantic City to survive, it has to have the buzz that Vegas had to survive Indian casinos," Gros said.
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