Sad news for Atlantic City: The parent company of Revel Entertainment Group, LLC, announced today that Revel Casino and Hotel will cease operations no later than September 10, subject to receipt of regulatory approvals.
"We regret the impact this decision has on our Revel employees who have worked so hard to maximize the potential of the property," Revel AC said in a statement. "We thank them for their professionalism and dedication; however we are faced with several unavoidable circumstances."
Efforts to find a buyer were not enough to save the hotel, and combined with "the effort to improve the financial performance of Revel" and "the considerable non-controllable expense structure that has financially burdened the property," the administrators opted to close. "While we continue to hope for a sale of Revel, in some form, through the pending bankruptcy process, Revel cannot avoid an orderly wind-down of the business at this time."
RELATED: Atlantic City's Revel Resort Files Second Bankruptcy
The casino opened in April 2012 at a reported cost of $2.4 billion, $20 million of which went to an ad campaign aimed at Manhattan’s meat-packing-district set. At the time, Travel Agent said that the resort was "somewhat at variance from the Atlantic City norm by the very virtue that one can seriously use the word 'resort' to describe it." The 6.3 million-square-foot hotel has 1,800 hotel rooms and 14 restaurants, including several with celebrity chefs.
The resort filed its first bankruptcy the following March, after less than a year of operations. In late June of this year, management warned employees that their jobs would be terminated if no buyer came forward.
As the Press of Atlantic City noted, an August 4 deadline for bids did not reveal any public suitors, although the story notes that confidentiality agreements required of bidders "have cloaked the sales process in secrecy." A private auction scheduled for August 7 at the New York offices of attorneys for the resort was postponed until this Thursday.
The hotel team will honor reservations and deposits while Revel remains open.