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. 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. A fundraiser for a VIP view of the implosion netted the club more than $16,000. Icahn said he would replace the $175,000 that had already been bid with his own money. The mayor 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.īut 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. I’m sorry to see it go.”Īlthough the former president built it, a different billionaire, Carl Icahn, acquired the two remaining Trump casinos in 2016 from the last of their many bankruptcies and owned the building. “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. 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.” “Everyone from Hulk Hogan to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it was the whole gamut of personalities.

“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. The removal of the one-time jewel of former President Donald Trump’s casino empire 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.” They will be demolished in the near future using heavy equipment, not explosives. Additional parts of the casino-hotel complex fronting on the Boardwalk and on Pacific Avenue, the main road along the row of casinos, were not included in the implosion.

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