Atlantic City’s shuttered Revel Casino Hotel finally has a new owner. The property was sold to Integrated Properties, a Colorado-based property developer, for $200 million.
The casino’s selling price is a far cry from the $2.4 billion spent to build the 1,400-room property in 2012, and Bruce Deifik, founder of Integrated Properties, said in a statement that he plans to reopen the compound by summer 2018. When it reopens, the Revel will henceforth be known as the Ocean Resort Casino.
In 2016, the Revel was sold to Florida property developer Glenn Straub for $82 million, who then sold it to Integrated Properties. Along the way, the casino visited bankruptcy court twice and was considered by multiple buyers before a judge approved Straub’s purchase.
Jordan Deifik, COO of Integrated Properties, told Bloomberg that that JP Morgan Chase & Co. provided financing for the acquisition. This makes sense, because the Revel was originally conceived as a flashy property to coax money from Wall Street bankers, and Integrated Properties’ Deifik plans on adding a high-end players’ club and new restaurants to the property in order to bring them back. However, the Revel’s initial failure can be traced to Atlantic City’s falling visitor numbers as a result of casino expansion in neighboring states.
"We are incredibly excited that we were able to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire this tremendous property at a time when Atlantic City is seeing great economic strides," Bruce Deifik said in a statement. "The former Revel property opened at a time when Atlantic City was still in economic recovery, and operationally it just did not cater to the customer base for this destination.”