ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (KYW Newsradio) — History was made in Atlantic City Wednesday morning when the deteriorating Trump Plaza casino met its long-awaited end.
The one-time jewel of former President Donald Trump's casino empire was imploded after falling into such disrepair that chunks of the building had begun to peel off and crash to the ground.
A series of loud explosions rocked the building shortly after 9 a.m., and it started to collapse almost like a wave from back to front until it went straight down in a giant cloud of dust that enveloped the beach and boardwalk. Overall, it took the structure less than 20 seconds to collapse.
The removal of the building clears the way for a prime development opportunity on the middle of the Boardwalk, where the Plaza used to market itself as "Atlantic City's centerpiece."
City officials had prepared for large crowds to come into town to watch it all go down. Atlantic City Police Capt. Rudy Lushina said Bader Field was the best place to watch.
"The view for that is going to be spectacular,” he said. “You'll see most of the building from that location, so that's why we're stressing to park out there."
Cars were kept a significant distance apart, Lushina said, allowing observers to get out and take pictures and videos.
Starting at 6 a.m. Wednesday, the area immediately surrounding Trump Plaza was blocked off in an "exclusion zone" from Georgia Avenue to Arkansas Avenue, and from Atlantic Avenue all the way to the beach. Drivers and pedestrians were kept out, and drones were prohibited within a half-mile radius.
It was a drone, however, that delayed the implosion from its 9 a.m. start time. The demolition crew was forced to hold off on pushing the button until a camera drone was cleared from the area.
"The way we put Trump Plaza and the city of Atlantic City on the map for the whole world was really incredible," said Bernie Dillon, the events manager for the casino from 1984 to 1991. "Everyone from Hulk Hogan to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it was the whole gamut of personalities. One night before a Tyson fight I stopped dead in my tracks and looked about four rows in as the place was filling up, and there were two guys leaning in close and having a private conversation: Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty."
"It was like that a lot: You had Madonna and Sean Penn walking in, Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson, Muhammad Ali would be there, Oprah sitting with Donald ringside," he recalled. "It was a special time. I'm sorry to see it go."
To complete the implosion, demolition crews positioned explosives at strategic points along the building's support structures designed to knock its legs out from under it, bringing the building down on itself, with the debris falling in a slightly north-northeast direction, Fire Chief Scott Evans said.
Though the former president built it, the building is now owned by a different billionaire, Carl Icahn, who acquired the two remaining Trump casinos in 2016 from the last of their many bankruptcies.
The implosion had been pushed back from last month. Mayor Marty Small proposed using the demolition as a fundraiser for the Boys And Girls Club of Atlantic City, and began an auction for the right to press the button that would bring the structure down. However, Icahn — a donor and former special economic adviser to Trump — objected on safety and liability issues, and got the auction house to halt the bids. Icahn said he would replace the $175,000 that had already been bid with his own money.
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Opened in 1984, when Trump was a real estate developer in his pre-politics days, Trump Plaza was for a time the most successful casino in Atlantic City. It was the place to be when mega-events such as a Mike Tyson boxing match or a Rolling Stones concert was held next door in Boardwalk Hall.
Things began to sour for Trump Plaza when Donald Trump opened the nearby Trump Taj Mahal in 1990, with crushing debt loads that led the company to pour most of its resources — and cash — into the shiny new hotel and casino.
The Trump Taj Mahal, another casino acquired by Icahn, has since reopened under new ownership as the Hard Rock.
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Trump Plaza was the last of four Atlantic City casinos to close in 2014, victims of an oversaturated casino market both in the New Jersey city and in the larger northeast. There were 12 casinos at the start of 2014; there now are nine.
By the time it closed, Trump Plaza was the poorest-performing casino in Atlantic City, taking in as much money from gamblers in 8 1/2 months as the market-leading Borgata did every two weeks.