Symbol of failure Trump Plaza implodes in Atlantic City
THE congregation gathered early on Wednesday at the Ducktown Tavern to deliver last rites for Trump Plaza, the once gilded, later decrepit former casino built by former President Donald Trump.
In its final incarnation, 19 seconds of deliberate destruction, Trump Plaza took its place alongside Atlantic City’s most iconic symbols of failure, imploded during an Ash on Wednesday breakfast hour, followed by the after party.
From the beach, where several hundred gathered, the Plaza’s 9 07 am final death rattle thudded against the sand until the main tower, already stripped of its parts and exterior walls, a house of cards draped in black netting, begging for years to be put out of its misery, disappeared from the Boardwalk skyline.
About a dozen interior blasts silenced the crowd - which had passing the time reminiscing about sex in Plaza bathrooms among other memories - followed by a low rumble out over the Boardwalk, and then the collapse the rear first, and then the front penthouse levels finally falling backwards into itself. It looked like a melting slot machine.
The Atlantic Ocean took no notice. Tony Andaloro, a day one food captain, pointed out where he had worked the nouveau French restaurant named for Trump’s first wife, Ivana, a view quickly replaced by a cloud of dust.
“It was the best job I ever had in A.C.,” said Andaloro, who watched from behind police fencing on the beach at Georgia Avenue. Nearby, Larry Kang, of Queens, held a small baby Trump balloon.
And so it was that the Donald Trump era, at least in Atlantic City, where it remains an endlessly debated reign of brass and celebrity, boxing and bankruptcy, a dubious domination of a town that bloated to four casinos, then shrank to none, was finally put to rest, 39 stories of rubble, a definitive demise.
The old guard turned out to watch, like the Dougherty’s, who watched from the roof of their Dock’s Oyster House, a century-old classic on Atlantic Avenue that has outlasted many an Atlantic City casino and hotel, including two prior implosions the Traymore in 1972 and the Sands in 2007.
Over at Caesars, high rollers were offered champagne in 299 dollars a night rooms.
People gathered on the beach, on parking garage rooftops, and at One Atlantic, a nearby wedding venue that juts out into the ocean on a pier, where people who had successfully bid (about 600 dollars) on ten pairs of VIP seats sat at little tables behind glass.
But in the end, whatever anyone’s feeling about Trump or the Plaza, impeachment or implosion, it was what it was another new empty lot in Atlantic City, masquerading as progress.
The casino itself has been closed since September 16, 2014, when it became the fourth casino to close in one year in Atlantic City.
The crowd on Wednesday wasn’t quite what local officials originally imagined when they dreamed up a high-profile auction to ceremonially “push the button” to start the implosion, originally scheduled to cheekily follow the inauguration by about a week.
Bids rose to 175,000 dollars, to benefit the city’s Boys & Girls Club. People joked about who could come to town to bear witness Stormy Daniels Hillary Clinton But Carl Icahn, the billionaire who took control of the Plaza out of bankruptcy in 2015, objected to any implosion spectacle, and instead made a personal donation of 175,000 dollars to the Boys and Girls Club. The date of the implosion, executed by Haines & Kibblehouse Inc., was moved to the less-than-spectacle hour of 9 am, on a seemingly random Wednesday in February.
The city tried to convince people to pay 10 dollars to park at Bader Field and watch from cars, across the water. About a hundred cars took them up on their offer.