The head of Atlantic City's main casino workers' union is accusing billionaire investor Carl Icahn of trying to "disembowel'' the city to line his own pockets.
Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union, made his comments Monday as former Showboat casino workers lamented the apparent demise of a deal to convert it into a college campus with an open-to-the-public hotel.
The Trump Taj Mahal is enforcing a legal covenant to block the Showboat from being used as anything other than a casino, saying it fears underage students trying to sneak in and gamble. Parent company Trump Entertainment Resorts, which Icahn is acquiring, says Stockton University should have bought the shuttered Atlantic Club at the opposite end of town for its campus instead of the Showboat.
McDevitt said it is immoral for Icahn, through Trump Entertainment, to block the Showboat redevelopment when the company is sitting on the vacant Trump Plaza that it shut down last September.
"This is a guy who has decided to disembowel the entire city to help his economic advancement,'' McDevitt said. "He has a boarded-up facility in the center of town, and at the other end of town, he's stopping the first good news this city has had in the last three or four years, just as the delivery trucks are pulling up to start the renovations. He has slave labor at the Taj, a boarded-up facility at the Plaza, and now he's sticking his foot out to trip the best development this city would have seen in years.''
Icahn, who also owns the Tropicana, and Stockton did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday. But Trump Entertainment, in a statement issued late Friday, said Stockton had better options than the Showboat, and knew for months in advance about the legal restriction that the Showboat not be used for other purposes.
Stockton bought the Showboat from Caesars Entertainment in December for $18 million; Caesars also owns the shuttered Atlantic Club casino at the southern end of the Boardwalk.
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"We question why the former Atlantic Club site was not selected? It was closed, in very good condition and not connected to an open and operating casino,'' Trump Entertainment said. "It was already deeded to be a non-casino hotel and owned by Caesars. The neighborhood would be ideal for a campus. What happened?''
While hesitating to declare the deal dead, Stockton says it will have to sell the Showboat if an agreement isn't reached in the next two weeks. That left many former Showboat workers, who hoped to be rehired to work at its hotel under Stockton management, dismayed. Cindy Talavera, who worked as a cook at the casino for 15 years before it closed on Aug. 31, applied for a new job there last month.
"A lot of us were happy; we knew they were going to open some restaurants and a hotel,'' said the single mother of four. "We know the building, and they said they were going to hire some of us who had worked there.
"Now, this is devastating,'' Talavera said. "We had our hearts set on going back to the place where we worked for so many years. We would have had jobs again. Our unemployment is running out; I only have three weeks left, and that's what a lot of us have been surviving on. It's just greed. Carl Icahn already has money. The more he has, the more he wants.''
