When Hard Rock International (HRI) hit the streets of Atlantic City (AC) about a year and a half ago with a new casino, it believed the venue would be a huge success. Reality has sunk in, however, and company brass isn’t impressed with the performance, or with the way HRI has been received in the city. Despite AC being on track for the third consecutive year of growth, HRI’s Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City isn’t anywhere close to what the company expected, and its leader calls the response disappointing.
Jim Allen, who leads HRI as its chairman and CEO, recently conducted an interview with Global Gaming Business. He believes that AC hasn’t been a good host to the gambling giant, and stated, “Candidly, we’re disappointed with Atlantic City. There’s no other way to say it. It’s a shame that they did not rise to the occasion of a company coming in, putting $500 million into that city.”
HRI took the old Trump Taj Mahal and converted it into what the company had hoped would be the center of attraction in the gambling city. It also led the way for 3,000 new jobs to be created, but Allen believes that AC has not shown enough gratitude for everything it has done. Perhaps the city is still pouting because it had to pay $4.8 million to settle a tax dispute at the beginning of this year.
More than just the tax dispute, though, AC is having to spend too much time recovering from the poor management it had running things in the past, as well as struggles over who should now be in charge. There has also been concern for years that the city cannot handle any more casinos under the belief that the local gambling scene has already become saturated. Tilman Fertitta, the owner of Golden Nugget, said just a couple of months ago that nine casinos in the city would be overextending the city’s capabilities and would lead to another catastrophic decline similar to what was seen in 2014.
HRI may be disappointed that it wasn’t offered the red-carpet treatment, but there had been so much revolving-door casino activity lately that perhaps officials were numb to showing any emotions. Still, given that the gambling scene is increasing for the third straight year and sports gambling is completely smashing records, HRI might want to consider looking in-house for any potential reasons why it isn’t at the top of the list.
