I've done it before but it's not convenient for very long sessions in a single day. Getting from the Borg to the boardwalk at 2 AM, even on a jitney, is far from ideal.

Although I admit not having buses at the Borg is a good thing: I'd rather have a great Boardwalk B&M....

Count me in on that thought!

+ 1

Sent from my SM-N900P using 2+2 Forums

Bally's built the room, and that was ACdan's idea. A room to rival Borgata. Then they got rid of him and the glimmer of hope they had went with him. No place in AC is willing make the long term commitment to grow a room. The GN has on a smaller scale. The Borgata lost their shirt at 1st. When the room was downstairs and they had an overlay on 90% of their tournaments. We forget how everyone laughed and said no one will leave the Taj. Here we are 11 years later and the Taj poker room is gone.
It can be done. But it takes upper management getting behind it long term. They won't. CET won't do it. They're too big and have too many cooks in the kitchen. They have to follow Borgata's blueprint. Give us a reason to go there. Treat poker players with respect. Give us comps, rooms based on our poker play not the crossplay some of us do on the floor/slots. Well eun tournaments,etc. But it probably will never happen anyway. I'm fine with that personally. I love the Borgata and wouldn't want to play anywhere else.

Sent from my SM-N900P using 2+2 Forums

I don't think that Bally's/WWW ever actually thought their poker room would compete with Borgata. That should be obvious from its placement in a dead zone tucked far away from the boardwalk and any other gaming.

You've said that before Rapini, and I've said this before too:
Aesthetically, it's awful. It feels like I'm playing in a warehouse. You can't just take a big room, throw on a coat of paint, and call it a poker room.

I would like a room that looks out on the Boardwalk, like the old Showboat room, but Bally's is only a short walk, which is ok. I think that the popularity of Borgata shows that proximity to the Boardwalk isn't that important to most players, as long as you give them a well run, well designed, comfortable room.

A nice room in a Boardwalk casino would be a big plus for me. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't have to try to compete with Borgata. I'm more comfortable in a smaller room.

You might have to wait for Poker Stars to build a poker room in Resorts.

Next for Revel: cutting the power

ACR shut off today

I am wondering if this new Revel owner is actually with it.

You're just now wondering that??

I didn't come up with that theory. The man who was is charge of all CET poker in AC told me his "vision". He wanted to give players options to play a wider variety of games at higher stakes than CET usually handled. This conversation took place during one of the freeroll events that CET hosted. He had a vision. Why do you think they pulled showboat's guarantee tournaments down to WWW? They have that halfassed high limit area. Alot of it was probably compromise with upper management. Regardless of it all borgata is still king with no end in sight.

Sent from my SM-N900P using 2+2 Forums

He's something of a showman, but there is method here. ACR has one customer, Revel, so they are insolvent. The ACR bondholders are SOL. Straub figures to be the only bidder for the assets when ACR has to liquidate, and he gets it for next to nothing.

It's a fine line between insanity and genius.
But.... if this guy does as you suggest, the line moves into genius territory.

Can ACR play chicken too? Can Straub really power the building (and cool/dehumidify it enough to keep mold out) with backup generators? Otherwise his $80M investment is going to start rotting as I understand it.

I really doubt it. And there is just no way the city inspector is going to pass a jury rigged generator setup or link through the Showboat.

Someone should sell tickets to this fiasco.

Seriously, people on here love being the voice of doom, always making declarative statements predicting the worst outcomes of everything.

Backup generators are used all the time to power buildings.How do you think hospitals get by when the power goes out?And hospitals use a lot of power. When the power went off at the white house a few days ago, you think the President just sat there in the dark? And no one's talking about jury rigging anything. Are you picturing Straub there himself hooking up a set of jumper cables to a generator he bought off the shelf at Home Depot? I'm sure there are plenty of licensed electrical contractors in AC they can call. A generator is a generator, whether it's permanently installed in a hospital basement or on the back of a flatbed parked outside a casino. They work the same. The laws of physics aren't site dependent.

Didn't the Borgata use back up power when that pipe burst a few years ago? And they stayed open, with rooms rented and players at the tables and machines!

The Revel is an empty building, other than staff and workers. I don't see a problem here, really. It'll just take some time, effort, and money.

I do wonder what ACR is planning on as a customer, though. Seeing as they only have Revel. I also wonder why Revel and ACR weren't set up as one company to begin with. Wouldn't that have avoided this entire situation?



Lee

Making it one company would definitely have solved this problem. My best guess is that Revel didn't have the capital, or was looking for ways to reduce the captial outlay as much as possible. I'm not sure but I thought I read it was an 8-figure investment to build the power plant? The other question is why someone thought investing eight figures into a power plan to serve one customer, in that market, was a decent idea, but I guess that goes to the overall question of building Revel in that market.

To answer this, and the far douchier post above it (thanks for clearing up that the laws of physics work the same in Revel as other places), no one is doubting that it's possible to run a casino on backup power. The question is can they install backup power quick enough? It took an (I think) eight-figure custom built power-plant to run the place, can they really get a custom solution built and installed in a couple of weeks? Obviously the power requirement is much, much less without having to run slot machines, most of the lights, hot water, etc. But it still must take a ton of energy to cool and dehumidify a building that size. How is this backup solution going to generate power? If they could have hooked to the city's power via whatever is serving Showboat, why did they build their own power plant in the first place?

How long before mold starts setting in in the building, and how long before they can get their own backup solution turned on?

Anyway, agree,

The two company question is addressed in today's Phila Inquirer at:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/d...evel-site.html

I recall they used municipal bands to finance the power plant, some sort of TIF financing for the main casino, plus some other private investors. This was after Morgan walked away from about $1B they had already sunk into the ground. Must have listened to the Voice of Doom.

JFC $160M plant wow. How much did they expect to be able to bill Revel annually to ever get a return on that investment?

.

The question being raised isn't "could a casino be run on backup power," it's "can Revel get set up with backup power that is sufficiently strong to run the AC for the whole building, and can they get it set up in time before serious permanent damage is done?"

Per the linked article, sounds like Staub says backup power will be in place by Thursday, then they can work with the city to build a transformer to use the city's power in a couple of months. So, I guess we'll find out Thursday? To me sounds like it would be a feat of engineering to get that much power generation set up that quickly, but we'll see one way or another this week.

FWIW I very much hope it works, and Straub can revitalize the property, and the whole city turns around. I worked in AC for three years in the business, and hope to see the city turn it around.

Check out the details from this December article:

http://articles.philly.com/2014-12-1...o-energy-l-l-c

Here is a good summary of Blatstein's plans for the Pier near Caesars:

http://www.philly.com/philly/busines...LAYGROUND.html

I do not remember ever going to the old Million Dollar Pier. I think, by the 60s, it was pretty decrepit. I still have great memories of Steel Pier, that poor horse falling into the tank of water. Back in the 1990s, the last known Diving Horse was about to be shipped off to the rendering plant, but $20k was raised in a week and he or she got the horse equivalent of assisted living.

lol, no, I just got around to posting it. When he came out with his genius campus, at a resort, I started to wonder, sometimes aloud.

I am not an attorney, nor do I play one on TV, but I wonder if he has any obligation to anyone since he bought the property in bankruptcy. ACR offered below market rates on the power, but Straub apparently refused.

It will be interesting to see what happens, because it has spectator value.

One thing is for sure, the first day it opened, we were all talking about the day that someone bought the place free and clear for $30 million. It turned out to be $90 million or so.

The Revel is a tremendous facility. If they could just move it somewhere. As it is, it is going to be something good, now that you only have to pay for the maintenance, with no mortgage.

Sure the maintenance is high, but well, if you just ran it as a luxury hotel, you would do just fine. The restaurants alone were the best in the city. Better than Borgata with spectacular views.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/d...evel-site.html

Someone asked about the yearly ACR bill, it was $36 million. And I guess Straub is going to buy ACR once it is bankrupt. That would mean that he is probably going to not settle with the original tenants either.

That I think is a mistake, because the restaurants and clubs were providing superior service.

Getting back to ACR, they not only provide the electricity, they own the cooling plant and provide the hot water. So it is not just a disconnect and re hook to city power to make things work, which raises a question.

They need AC units for every window, and a bunch of hot water heaters in addition to a bunch of generators in order to get the Revel back online. There are major mechanical issues here, not a trivial ordering of back up generators.

It looks like the company that owns South Jersey Gas has about half of ACR, and then there is the construction company that built the thing that has the other half. So, I think my parents South Jersey gas bill is going to go up a tad when ACR goes bankrupt.

So this notion of just hooking up to the city electricity is nonsense. Straub means to bankrupt ACR and then buy it for a song. Back up generators will keep the fines from accruing, as they will be able to fight a fire with the cold water, but they will not be cooling the place, or providing hot water with just back up generators.

A bunch of fans, along with a bunch of dehumidifiers, and back up generators will probably be enough until Straub bankrupts ACR and buys them in another year or so.

interesting.