Jul 10, 2017 Built in 1990, the Trump Taj Mahal is a closed casino that sits on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey. The property recently changed hands for $50 million and will be redeveloped in a.
Former employees hug early in the morning outside the closing Trump Taj Mahal, Monday, Oct. 10, 2016, in Atlantic City, N.J. Nearly 3,000 workers were laid off amid the hotel's closure. (AP)
Donald Trump opened his Trump Taj Mahal casino 26 years ago, calling it 'the eighth wonder of the world.'
But his friend and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn closed it Monday morning, making it the fifth casualty of Atlantic City's casino crisis.
The sprawling Boardwalk casino, with its soaring domes, minarets and towers built to mimic the famed Indian palace, shut down at 5:59 a.m., having failed to reach a deal with its union workers to restore health care and pension benefits that were taken away from them in bankruptcy court.
Nearly 3,000 workers lost their jobs, bringing the total jobs lost by Atlantic City casino closings to 11,000 since 2014.
Picketers affixed an anti-Icahn poster that they had signed to the casino's main Boardwalk entrance door. It proclaimed 'We held the line.'
'We held the line against a billionaire taking from us!' said Marc Scittina, a food service worker at the Taj Mahal's player's club since shortly after it opened in 1990. 'This battle has been going on for two years.'
The union went on strike July 1, and Icahn decided to shut the place down a little over a month later, determining there was 'no path to profitability.'
The Taj Mahal becomes the fifth Atlantic City casino to go out of business since 2014, when four others, including Trump Plaza, shut their doors.
But this shutdown is different: it involves a casino built by the Republican candidate for president, who took time out from the campaign trail to lament its demise.
'I felt they should have been able to make a deal,' Trump told The Associated Press in a recent interview. 'It's hard to believe they weren't able to make a deal.'
Chuck Baker, a cook at the Taj Mahal since the day it opened in April 1990, was on the picket line outside the casino at the moment it shut down. He was here when the doors opened in April 1990 and wanted to be there when they closed as well.
He led a moment of silence among the otherwise rowdy 200 or so picketers on the Boardwalk outside the casino 'before we shut down Taj Mahal.'
'This didn't have to happen,' he said. 'To (Icahn), it's all just business. But to us, it's destroying our livelihoods and our families. You take away our health care, our pensions and overload the workers, we just can't take it.'
Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union, said virtually all of the striking workers feel the same way.
'Everybody has their Popeye moment: 'That's all I can stands; I can't stands no more,' ' he said. 'The workers made a choice that they weren't going to accept benefits and terms of employment worse than everyone else's. I applaud them: for the first time in 30 years, workers stood up to Carl Icahn and made him throw in the towel.'
Icahn reached his own Popeye moment on Aug. 3, when he determined the $350 million he had lost investing in, and then owning, the Taj Mahal was enough. It was then that he decided to close the casino, fearing he would lose an additional $100 million next year.
'Today is a sad day for Atlantic City,' he said Monday. 'Like many of the employees at the Taj Mahal, I wish things had turned out differently.'
The union reached contracts on June 30 with four of the five casinos it had targeted for a possible strike — including the Tropicana, which Icahn also owns. It granted negotiation extensions to three others: the Borgata, Resorts and the Golden Nugget. McDevitt said talks with the Borgata will begin this month, followed closely by the remaining two.
The Taj Mahal joins the Atlantic Club, Showboat, Trump Plaza and Revel in the growing club of Atlantic City casinos that, since 2014, have succumbed to economic pressure brought about in large measure by competition from casinos in neighboring states. The city now will have seven casinos.
Later Monday, newly unemployed former Taj Mahal workers were to begin signing up for unemployment benefits and temporary help with utility payments at a union-run resource center at a nearby hotel.
The illuminated Trump Taj Mahal Casino is seen from a rooftop parking lot at dusk in Atlantic City. (REUTERS/Mark Makela/File)
The Trump Taj Mahal casino will shut down after Labor Day, the victim of the longest strike in Atlantic City's 38-year casino era.
The closure of the casino opened by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump but now owned by his friend and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn will cost about 3,000 workers their jobs, and reduce the number of casinos in Atlantic City to seven.
Those job losses will be in addition to 8,000 workers who lost their jobs when four Atlantic City casinos closed in 2014.
And the bloodletting may not be over yet: Voters will decide in November whether to permit two new casinos in northern New Jersey just outside New York City, a development that would likely lead to additional casino closures in Atlantic City.
Tony Rodio, president of Tropicana Entertainment, which runs the Taj Mahal, said management decided Wednesday it can no longer operate a money-losing property in the midst of a strike. On Thursday, the walkout by Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union will reach its 35th day, eclipsing the 34-day walkout the union staged against seven casinos in 2004.
Showboat Casino
'Currently the Taj is losing multi-millions a month, and now with this strike, we see no path to profitability,' Rodio said. 'Our directors cannot just allow the Taj to continue burning through tens of millions of dollars when the union has singlehandedly blocked any path to profitability. Unfortunately we've reached the point where we will have to close the Taj.'
The central issue in the strike is restoration of health insurance and pension benefits that previous owners got a bankruptcy court judge to approve in Oct. 2014. Icahn offered to restore health insurance to Taj Mahal workers, but at a level less than what workers at the city's other seven casinos receive.
Trump Taj Mahal History
The union rejected that offer.
Trump Taj Mahal Casino Ownership
Donald Trump once owned three Atlantic City casinos, but cut most ties with the city by 2009. Having lost ownership of the company to bondholders in a previous bankruptcy, Trump resigned as chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts, retaining a 10 percent stake in return for the use of his name. That interest was wiped out in bankruptcy court when Icahn took over in March.