A 34-storey casino in Atlantic City, once owned by former US President Donald Trump was demolished and people paid up to Rs 40,000 to watch. The casino and the former Trump Plaza hotel had been closed since 2014. Since then, the casino was imploded after falling into such disrepair began that the building was peeling off and crashing to the ground.
The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, launched by the former US President Donald Trump on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City in 1984, has been demolished by a controlled implosion. The casino was built at a cost of $210 million but was sold off for a relative pittance, at $20 million, in 2013. With the sale, Trump Entertainment was left with just one casino, Trump Taj Mahal, which was sold to the Seminole Tribe of Florida in 2017 to become the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Trump himself cut ties with the casino in 2009 after a series of bankruptcy filings, even suing it to stop using his name in 2014, as it was deemed insufficiently luxurious to bear his name under the terms of the licensing agreement. The words “TRUMP PLAZA”, once adorned on the top of the building in red, were taken down in October 2014.
The casino and the hotel were once the crown jewel of Donald Trump’s Atlantic city empire. The casino was often hosted by an array of celebrities, with Mike Tyson having boxed there in the 1980s, and figures including Madonna, Hulk Hogan, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards is known to have frequented it.
On Wednesday morning, at around 9.08 AM. the establishment was demolished using controlled explosions. About 3,000 sticks of dynamite were used to demolish the building, the first of three casinos Trump owned in Atlantic City before they all went bankrupt.
Following the destruction, many commented on social media saying it was the end of a 74-year-old reign in the city. Interestingly, the demolition of the building was highly promoted on the internet and on various social media platforms, with websites sharing links on how to watch the event live.
A series of loud explosions around 9 a.m. rocked the building, which started to collapse in a wave from back to front until it plunged straight down in a giant cloud of dust that enveloped the beach and Boardwalk. Overall, it took the structure less than 20 seconds to implode.
“I got chills,” Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small said. “This is a historic moment. It was exciting.”
It is estimated that the remaining pile of rubble is about eight stories tall and would be removed by June 10. Some of it could be used by environmentalists interested in building an artificial fishing reef off the coast of Atlantic City. Additional parts of the casino-hotel complex fronting on the Boardwalk and on Pacific Avenue, the main road along the row of casinos, were not included in the implosion. They will be demolished in the near future using heavy equipment, not explosives.
While the demolition had been planned for some time, as the casino had also not been functional for years, it acquired poignance to some, as it takes place a month after Trump stepped down from the White House, only to face a historic second impeachment trial.
The removal of the one-time jewel of former President Donald Trump’s casino empire clears the way for a prime development opportunity on the middle of the Boardwalk, where the Plaza used to market itself as “Atlantic City’s centrepiece.”
