Atlantic Club casino falls victim in tough market

[Monsieur G]

Atlantic Club casino falls victim in tough market

ATLANTIC CITY
At a minute past midnight, Debra Wagner was suddenly unemployed.
A housekeeper for 23 years at the Atlantic Club, she was one of 1,600 workers who lost their jobs early Monday when the struggling casino shut down, the victim of a glut of casinos in the northeastern U.S.

Just a few hours after a handful of customers and last-shift workers counted down the casino’s final five seconds, Wagner stood in line with hundreds of others at a union hall, hoping to score a $20 supermarket gift card and some help in filling out unemployment paperwork.

“I had planned to retire here,” she said. “Right now I’ll collect unemployment, and maybe in the spring somebody will start hiring. Hopefully.”

That seemed unlikely. With casinos popping up in states all around it, the Atlantic Club became a victim of the cold efficiency of the marketplace: Analysts have long said that in this region, there are too many casinos and not enough gamblers to keep them all afloat.

Two rival casino companies paid a combined $23.4 million to shut down the Atlantic Club and remove what they considered unneeded capacity from the market. Tropicana Entertainment bought the slot machines, table games and customer lists, while Caesars Entertainment bought an 801-room hotel for which it has no immediate plans.

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