\nWayne Parry, Associated Press \u00b7<\/p>\n
\tATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) \u2014 Since Glenn Straub bought Atlantic City\u2019s former Revel casino for about 4 cents on the dollar in April, it has brought him nothing but trouble.<\/p>\n
\tAnd he\u2019s fine with that.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cGive me even more problems,\u201d the Florida developer said. \u201cWe get up in the morning to take care of problems. That\u2019s what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLater this month, he\u2019ll have two more. Winter is fast approaching and Revel still has no contract with a utility supplier for heat and hot water to keep pipes from freezing and bursting. Straub has submitted plans to city officials to use boilers for winter heat, but ACR Energy Partners, the utility company with which he has been sparring since before buying the casino, is trying to block him from connecting boilers to equipment ACR says it owns inside Revel.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cDespite having had many months to contract for a long-term energy supply and arrange for the necessary heat to prevent the pipes in the Revel complex from freezing, Polo North has waited until the eve of winter to concoct a temporary heating plan that both unequivocally uses ACR\u2019s equipment without authorization and threatens that equipment,\u201d the utility wrote in a court filing.<\/p>\n
\tAnd that\u2019s not all: Bank of New York Mellon is asking a judge to order Straub\u2019s Polo North Country Club to pay $1 million in back electric bills to ACR.<\/p>\n
\tBoth matters will be the subject of federal court hearings on Nov. 24.<\/p>\n
\tSo far, Straub has sunk well over $100 million into Revel, with very little to show for it.<\/p>\n
\tThe heating situation is just one of many headaches with which Straub has had to deal since buying the 3-year-old resort, which cost $2.4 billion to build, out of bankruptcy court for $82 million. He has considered re-opening it in one of a half-dozen possible incarnations including an indoor water park, a medical tourism resort, an equestrian facility, and even a \u201cgenius academy\u201d that would bring together the world\u2019s top minds to tackle society\u2019s problems. Earlier this month, he suggested housing Syrian refugees there.<\/p>\n
\tJust two days after he took the keys, ACR, the building\u2019s sole utility supplier, cut off service in the absence of a contract for future service.<\/p>\n
\tThe city began fining him for not having fire safety systems powered, and the state ordered ACR to keep limited power flowing to power alarms and elevators, along with a red warning light atop the 47-story building to prevent airplanes from flying into it.<\/p>\n
\tA judge blessed an interim arrangement in which Straub was to put money into an escrow account to pay for the limited power, but the bank says he is $1 million behind on those payments. (Straub says it\u2019s because ACR won\u2019t bill him only for the power he uses and not for power flowing to the utility\u2019s own equipment.)<\/p>\n
\tWhile Straub\u2019s Polo North Country Club and ACR sue each other, ACR\u2019s lender is foreclosing on it.<\/p>\n
\tStraub is waging separate legal battles over taxes, sewage fees and whether former business tenants at Revel will be permitted to stay there if it ever re-opens. And the city recently fined Straub for dismissing unionized engineers who supervised fire safety systems.<\/p>\n
\tStraub also lost out on a bid to acquire another shuttered casino: the former Showboat casino next door. Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein swooped in after Straub\u2019s deal to buy it from Stockton University fell through<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wayne Parry, Associated Press \u00b7 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) \u2014 Since Glenn Straub bought Atlantic City\u2019s former Revel casino for about 4 cents on the dollar in April, it has brought him nothing but trouble. And he\u2019s fine with that….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}