Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

Pack up your bags, cause we're going to the beach! Never mind the fact that it's September, 60 degrees, and raining. We'll hit the casinos there though! (although the ones we're looking at are closed too). But first, let's take another look at a strip mall we saw last week. 

Exton RadioShack Update
The new awning is being installed and it looks like stucco is ready to go up!

A Record Achievement
I was snooping through the record bin at Goodwill and came across one made for Grants. If I'm remembering correctly it was a Christmas compilation album from the 60's.

Whiteland Towne Center, Exton, PA
A small tower was recently put at the newly created end of the center now that most of the old Winner's Circle has been demolished for a new CVS.

About 1/3 of the old Winner's Circle space was left vacant. This is now home to Nothing Bundt Cakes.

Looking towards the new CVS from in front of the Winners Circle remnants.

Former short-lived TCBY Yogurt. It opened in 2012 and closed down when the chain divested a bunch of stores in 2014.

This space was Subway, which closed in 2014. It happened around the same time Exton's Walmart got a Subway, though I doubt the two events are connected.

Country Bagel's been closed for a few years now. They finally took down the signs when they repainted the center in 2018.

TJ Maxx, which moved to the former Office Depot across the street in 2011. It became Gabe's in 2018.

Learning Express Toys moved here from Lionville in the mid-2000's, relocated to the Mall in 2010, then moved back to the exact same storefront in Lionville last year. It's now being used as extra storage for Plato's Closet next door.

This was Framer's Market, a photo framing center. It closed in the mid-2010's. It and the space next door have been combined into Once Upon a Child, Plato's Closet's childrenswear store.

Family Christian opened in 2014, and closed with the chain in 2017. It was formerly a mattress store, and has since become a gym.

Taking a peek inside, it looks like they just left behind whatever fixtures didn't sell.

Looking towards Big Lots, formerly home to Marshall's. The center almost lost them recently- they placed a bid to buy the Exton Toys R Us from the bankruptcy sale, but were ultimately outbid by Raymour & Flanigan.

Looking down the awning. I appreciate the fact that they didn't put a flat ceiling in here.

Former Plato's Closet, which moved here in 2011 from elsewhere in the center, and moved in 2016 to the former Ulta space. Ulta moved in 2013 to the same center as TJ Maxx and Dressbarn.

At first I thought this was a vacant storefront, but just now have realized this is actually part of Hollywood Tans, whose main entrance is next door.

Here we go, I should have used this photo instead of my 2015 one for the Kohl's in my last post.

This used to be a Christian bookstore called The Mustard Seed. After sitting vacant for several years, it has become Pop-In Kids Club (I suspect kids club may be a euphemism for daycare).

This was Definitely Dance, a dance shoe store, which moved to the former Snip-It's in 2017. Snip-It's moved into the mall a few years prior, but has since closed. Ironically, this is now home to UBreak|IFix, which moved here from the mall.

Tanger Outlets, Atlantic City, NJ
In the early 2000's, the sides of the road between the AC Expressway and the casino strip were redeveloped into an outlet mall. Most of my pictures from driving through it didn't come out, but I figured a few of the bad ones were worth including for historical reasons. Like this, for example, closed with the chain and currently sits vacant.

Toys R Us, as you know, closed with the chain in 2018. It has since become a Dollar Tree, which I guess is slightly better than it sitting vacant.

Forever 21 is still open here but given the state the company was in going into the bankruptcy, I don't believe their survival is assured.

Eckerd/Rite Aid/Walgreens, Atlantic City, NJ
New Jersey was one of the more mixed states when it came to the Walgreens slaughter. Stores were bought on a town-by-town basis and Atlantic City was one of the unlucky ones; they lost all three of theirs. Two were former Eckerds, and one was a new-build Rite Aid from 2016. The Jersey Shore was hit pretty badly altogether; most of the Rite Aids left are on the western side of the state.

Trump Taj Mahal/Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Atlantic City, NJ
This casino began construction in 1983 under the Resorts Casino Company, but wasn't opened until 1990 by which point it had been bought by our president. At the time it opened, it was regarded as the most "largest and most flamboyant casino in the world". It cost nearly one billion dollars to build. For the first 13 years it was open, it was the highest-grossing casino in the city. Over the next few years, it was dealt a series of blows that ultimately led to its demise. In 2003, the Borgata opened. The Borgata was newer, larger, and even more luxurious. It stole a significant portion of the Taj Mahal's clientele. They also lost more customers the following year when Pennsylvania legalized casinos. They nearly closed in 2014 alongside Atlantic Club, Showboat, Trump Plaza, and Revel, but managed to emerge from bankruptcy. The final nail in the coffin came when workers went on strike in 2016. The casino had never fully recovered from the previous years, and couldn't afford to meet the union's demands. In the end, owner Carl Icahn (at that point, The Donald had sold off all but 10% of his shares in this, and held the final pieces only for the naming rights) decided to close. Fortunately, only a few months later it was purchased by the Seminole Nation, who renovated and reopened the casino as a Hard Rock.

At the point I visited, the casino had been closed for about a year and was having a fixture sale. There were two catches- they weren't allowed to sell gambling equipment or anything with the Trump name on it. Arguably those would be the two biggest draws to the sale, so that put a little damper on things, but overall the sale was a huge success. It went on all summer long. Basically everybody in the area knew somebody that went. I was dumb and waited until the final week of the sale to go, at which point basically everything had already been sold. At the beginning, shoppers had free reign of the entire building, but by the time I got there, little more than the lobby was open.

To quote a specific song about Atlantic City, "Everything dies, baby that's a fact, but everything that dies some day comes back". I think it fits the closure and reopening of this place well.

The parking garage on the inland side of the casino had a massive sign on top of it. The white space up top used to say Trump, but he had his name scrubbed from the building as soon as it closed.

Same goes for the blank space to the left of this sign. While Hard Rock got rid of the casino's Indian theme, they kept the curved walls flanking the main driveway, bricked in the arches, and clad them in sleek marble.
The building seen in the background here was Revel, which is regarded as one of the biggest casino failures ever. We'll be seeing more of that next post.

I don't know what I was shooting for with this picture, but it's the only one that even partially captures the carved elephants that were out front. These had already been sold by the time I got here, but hadn't been picked up yet. Not that they were anywhere near being in my price range to begin with.

The Taj Mahal was one of the last to open with the classic rococo-flavored flashing lights and neon so commonly associated with. Modern casinos tend to favor a smooth, elegant-but-not-flamboyant design.

Shore weather really takes a toll on buildings, but somehow I doubt this damage all occurred within one year. The maintenance budget probably got a few cuts within its final years of operation.

There's also a surprising number of missing bulbs in the lights bordering the ceiling coffers. I'm guessing vandals have thrown things at them since the casino closed.

Here's the main driveway entrance! Let's head inside, shall we?

The lobby holds 99% of the fixtures that are left here. Unlike the building's exterior, this is still in great shape. That didn't stop it from being totally redone, though.

The lobby chandeliers were picked by the president's first wife, Ivana, and imported from Austria. They initially cost about 30 grand, and were being sold for only a fraction of that.

The rest of my interior pictures are sorta hit-or-miss. This was a convenience store off to the side of the lobby, catering to the hotel guests.

Mattresses were understandably one of the less sold-out items here. There were significantly fewer ones down here than there were rooms in the hotel, which indicates that somebody's been buying them (my bet is seedy motels that wouldn't want to splurge on new ones). That's kinda gross; I can only imagine what's happened on these. But who knows- maybe a mobster left money inside one. This place, like most casinos, had close ties with the New York Mob, and even admitted to laundering money for them.

The main gambling floor has been taped off. I suspect Hard Rock wanted to reuse these machines.

The elevator lobby chandeliers have been sold and picked up already. I know in places like this dim=classy, but the bright temporary lights look much more inviting.

I think this was an auditorium or banquet hall originally. The missing ceiling tiles are probably from the beginning stages of construction rather than damage from its time sitting vacant.

This bridge connected the casino to Steel Pier, an amusement park dating back to 1898.

Hard Rock Cafe had a location in the casino that opened out onto the boardwalk. It remained in operation after the casino closed. Ironically, its presence here had nothing to do with Hard Rock taking over the casino. The Seminole Nation bought the casino independently, and selected Hard Rock to be the franchise. Even stranger is that the Cafe was evicted as part of the remodel.

Sorry for the terrible picture. The boardwalk-side entrance was given a facelift a few years ago, and had a newer logo than the rest of the building.

While most of the remodeling done by Hard Rock was just redoing finishings, this rear entrance got totally rebuilt.

While I get that the building's Indian design didn't quite match the Hard Rock theme, it's still a shame they ripped all this off.

Finishing off with a look at the main hotel tower. They didn't really do much to the exterior of this aside from putting up new signage.

After referencing it a few times in this post, I need to include the song. Native New Jerseian Bruce Springsteen did it originally, but I've always been partial to The Band's cover.