Last Saturday was the day when the Showboat Atlantic City casino was acquired by a New Jersey college. It is no longer managed by Caesars Entertainment Corp; the representatives of Richard Stockton College are now officially in charge of the property.
The property purchase itself cost the college the sum of $18 million. Once the deal was finalized, the new owners were asked to answer some questions and provide the communities with information about the future purpose of the former casino.
According to the announcement they made, the venue will be transformed into a dormitory. It will spread over 1.4 million square feet.
The year was definitely not profitable and successful to Atlantic City-based casinos. At the beginning of 2014, there were 12 venues but during the year four of them filed for bankruptcy and the worst of all is that a fifth one might have the same fate really soon.
As a result of the closures, the buildings where the shuttered casinos were located, became practically unusable and the New Jersey officials were trying to come up with an innovative approach for putting these buildings back into practice.
Now, the Showboat is about to undergo significant changes.
As for the casino floor, it will be designed to accommodate administrative offices.
The areas where the former theaters were, are intended to become places where dancing facilities will be available. As reported by the college executives, they are also suitable for music and drama events to take place.
The former Showboat casino had three towers and now, the new owners have decided to keep one of them as a hotel that has 479 rooms available. They are to be open for guests in the first quarter of 2015.
College representatives gave further information and said that due to the fact that students are not living at the campus during the summer months, the dorm rooms will serve as a hotel. It is common knowledge that during the summer period, there is a high demand for hotel accommodation in Atlantic City.
Actually, the college officials said that the purchase of the property was the more inexpensive part of the casino transformation. The construction of the new facilities is said to be much more costly.
It is a well known fact that the gaming companies are afraid of the tough competition and as a result, the owners of casinos that have closed doors for visitors are not allowed to reopen them as casinos.
The CEO of the former owner of the Showboat – Gary Loveman, commented that the wide variety of activities every tourist and local resident can find are definitely beneficial to the stakeholders of the city.
