“He tried, and he was not that successful. “He wasn’t a success in Atlantic City,” Wood said. Martin Wood, almost 80 years old and operator of a pawn shop his father founded in 1927 near the boardwalk, is among those with bitter feelings about Trump. “He made things happen, and God knows Atlantic City needs someone who can make things happen.” “Maybe someday he’ll see fit to return,’’ said Dan Geiger, president of a limousine company that did a lot of business with Trump.

Some, nevertheless, still recall Trump’s glory days with fondness. Left behind are decidedly mixed memories of the entertainment executive who manufactured a wave of spectacular success for himself and Atlantic City that suddenly receded, its imprint hard to detect now amid the obvious economic hardship and the vacant boardwalks. The hotel and casino is scheduled to reopen in the summer of 2018 and many, including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, believe it will breathe new life into Atlantic City.The Trump name still adorns the facade of the Taj Mahal, but the man himself never visits any more. The Trump name was removed from the exterior in February and is the first sign of Hard Rock International’s planned $375 million transformation. Hard Rock International is owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida who achieved great financial success as the first Indian tribe in the United States to open gambling halls in the 1970s and acquired the Hard Rock brand in 2007. Icahn still owns a second Trump property in Atlantic City, Trump Plaza, that has been closed since 2014.

Icahn acquired the Trump Taj Mahal hotel and casino in 2016 when he bought Trump Entertainment Resorts out of its fifth bankruptcy filing and reportedly lost $350 million after the acquisition. Trump as the “Eighth Wonder of the World” when it opened in 1990, the Trump Taj Mahal hotel and casino in Atlantic City recently sold for literally pennies on the dollar.Ĭlosed since a labor strike in October 2016, Hard Rock International bought the shuttered property from American billionaire businessman Carl Icahn for $50 million, which amounts to only four cents on the dollar of the $1.2 billion construction price, according to filings with the SEC first reported by the Associated Press.

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