MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Trump Plaza implosion: Donald Trump's Atlantic City casino demolished, Internet says 'they'll blow up his house'

After 7 years of abandonment, Trump Hotel and Casino at Atlantic CIty was demolished, leaving behind a large pile of rubble and smoke

On Wednesday, February 17, former President Donald Trump’s first hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was demolished after years of abandonment. The Trump Plaza has been closed since 2014 and was destroyed at 9.08 am PST, leaving behind a large pile of rubble and smoke. The video of Trump plaza getting destroyed made its way to Twitter, where several people shared it and started to slam Trump by calling the destruction of the building a “fitting finale to the Trump era”. While talking about the casino, Bernie Dillon, the former events manager for the casino, said the Trump Plaza used to be very famous in the entertainment circle.

“The way we put Trump Plaza and the city of Atlantic City on the map for the whole world was really incredible. Everyone from Hulk Hogan to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it was the whole gamut of personalities," he said. "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."

RELATED ARTICLES

Will Trump Plaza be renamed? West Palm Beach residents vote to dump ex-President's name after Capitol riots

Trump Plaza in Atlantic City to be blown up next month, auction planned for seats to view demolition

Dillon added that other notable celebrities like Madonna, Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand, Muhammad Ali and Oprah Winfrey frequently visited the hotel.

Trump Plaza’s history

Trump Plaza was opened on May 15, 1984, and contained 614 rooms, seven restaurants, a health club, a 750-seat showroom, and a 60,000 sq ft casino. In the beginning, the casino performed poorly, with pre-tax profits of just $144,000 in the first half of 1984, which led Trump to pay $62 million to purchase the neighboring, unfinished Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino, including a hotel tower that had formerly been a Holiday Inn.

To garner media attention, Trump Plaza hosted WrestleMania IV and WrestleMania V events in 1988 and 1989. From 1985 to 1988, Trump Plaza was also the onsite host of 19 professional boxing events.

Trump Plaza saw a steep decline in yearly revenue after Trump opened the Trump Taj Mahal in 1990. The casino narrowly averted a default on a 1991 payment to bondholders by taking out a $25 million mortgage on its parking garage. In 1995, Trump granted ownership of Trump Plaza to his publicly traded company, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (also known as Trump Entertainment Resorts). In 2013, Trump Entertainment Resorts proposed to sell the Trump Plaza for $20 million to the Meruelo Group. However, the hotel and casino closed permanently in September 2014.

After the videos of Trump Plaza’s demolition started to surface online, several users started to slam the former president. One user wrote: "A fitting finale to the Trump era. The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino just got demolished". Another wrote: "The first is always the sweetest. If you agree & appreciate that his entire house of cards, in addition to tRump Plaza in Atlantic City, is falling down, follow me. I gladly #FBR". A third user tweeted: "Trump tower in Atlantic City is demolished just like the trump presidency!!! The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino just got demolished".

Another resonated similar thoughts by responding to Donald Trump Jr.'s tweet: "I just watched the Trump Plaza demolition in Atlantic City. It looked a lot like your dad's demolition, though that one seems to be proceeding in slow motion." Another person tweeted: "Well, they’re blowing up Trump Plaza in Atlantic City tomorrow, yeah well they’ll blow up his house too".

Even though several are slamming Trump over the demolition of his former hotel and casino, it should be noted here that the former president had already cut all ties with the casino in 2009 after a series of bankruptcy filings. The former president had even filed a lawsuit in 2014, requesting his name to be removed from the facility. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn currently owns the site and has not revealed any future plans.

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.