Ocean Resort Casino Owner: We'll Surprise The World

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ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — The owner of Atlantic City's Ocean Resort Casinos promised to "surprise the world" when the former Revel casino reopens next week.

Bruce Deifik said Wednesday his team has fixed what customers didn't like about Revel, and is ready to show it off.

All he needs now is a casino license.

In testimony before the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, Deifik said he has $40 million in cash on hand to operate the business, and is ready to go.

"When we open a week from Thursday, we will surprise the world as to how we treat our customers and what we have to offer," he said. "We listened very carefully to what mattered to people. It is completely different. We changed the entire casino floor, the sight lines. With the sports book in the middle of the casino floor, it's a different place."

Ocean Resort has to prove to state regulators that its executives have good character and integrity, adequate financial resources, business ability and casino experience. The commission is hearing Ocean Resort's request for a casino license, but does not expect to vote on the request until Thursday.

Revel, which cost $2.4 billion to build, shut down in September 2014 after a little over two years of operation, never having come close to making a profit. Deifik bought it in January for $200 million from Glenn Straub, who failed to reopen it in three years after buying it from bankruptcy court.

Both Ocean Resort and the Hard Rock will open their doors on June 28.

Deifik's family currently owns 89 percent of the casino, and will never own less than 54 percent of it, he testified. Financiers include J.P. Morgan Chase and Luxor Capital Group, which has the option to eventually own as much as 34 percent of the business.

He revealed that comedian and actor Jamie Foxx will serve as a host for the casino's opening weekend. Acts that have already been booked include Wanda Sykes, along with boxing and mixed martial arts contests.

And Deifik aimed higher than that, albeit unsuccessfully.

"We went to Bruce Springsteen's agents and said, 'We'd sure love to be able to have a free concert on the beach, no charge,'" Deifik said. "I assumed if you wrote a $1 million check to his charity" that would get Springsteen to agree, Deifik said.

"They came back and said, '$5 million,'" he said.

Deifik outlined numerous ways in which he would run the casino differently than the way Revel operated. That includes allowing smoking, not insisting on a two-night minimum stay, enclosing the casino's vertiginous escalators with 2-foot-tall glass safety panels on each side, and installing a buffet, which will open by winter.

He said he has spent $35 million on renovations since taking control of the property in January. One symbolically important project involves knocking down the stone wall that sealed off the casino from the Boardwalk. Now patrons will be able to walk up small staircase onto the property, and be met by ambassadors offering to walk them to wherever they are headed on the property.

Deifik also revealed he plans to finish 12 unfinished floors of hotel rooms within the first year that would bring the total to 1,950 hotel rooms.

"When I got to Atlantic City and saw the quality of the structure, I realized there potentially was an incredible opportunity," he said. "We could turn this hotel casino property into one of the great properties in the world, not just Atlantic City."

(Copyright 2018 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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