Atlantic City auctions off chance to blow up major Trump property
With the right amount, you could be the one to press the button to blow up Trump’s casino
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Your support makes all the difference.Locals in Atlantic City, New Jersey, will have a unique opportunity next month — the chance to blow up a casino belonging to president Donald Trump. The winner will be picked through a fundraiser for a charity in the area for children and teens.
Mr Trump’s property was being used as a casino since 1984 until it shut down in 2014 and fell into a state of disrepair. The demolition work had already begun early this year but the remaining structure is set to be blown up on 29 January, just nine days after the swearing-in of the president-elect Joe Biden.
Now authorities have decided to make the destruction of the property a fundraiser. The person who will press the button will be decided through a live bidding process on 19 January, with the honour going to the highest bidder.
“Local buyers can push the button as close as safely possible,” to “implode Trump plaza for charity,” the listing said.
“Some of Atlantic City's iconic moments happened there, but on his way out, Donald Trump openly mocked Atlantic City, saying he made a lot of money and then got out,” the Associated Press quoted Mayor Marty Small as saying. “I wanted to use the demolition of this place to raise money for charity.”
The money would benefit the charity Boys & Girls Club of Atlantic City, and the mayor hopes it will raise in excess of $1m. The organisation provides after-school and summer recreation, education and career-training programmes for Atlantic City children and teens.
Mr Trump, who was a real estate developer before becoming a reality TV star, opened the casino in a prime spot at the centre of Atlantic City’s Boardwalk, where the Atlantic City Expressway deposited cars entering the resort. It was the site of many high-profile boxing matches, which Mr Trump would regularly attend.
It closed in 2014, one of four Atlantic City casinos to shut down that year, followed by another former Trump casino, the Taj Mahal, in 2016. That property has since reopened as the Hard Rock casino.
Mr Trump at one point owned three casinos in the city. The third casino, Trump Marina, was sold to Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta in 2011 and is now called the Golden Nugget.
Mr Trump cut ties with Atlantic City in 2009 aside from a 10 per cent fee for the use of his name on what were then three casinos in the city. That stake was extinguished when billionaire Carl Icahn took ownership of the company out of bankruptcy court in February 2016.
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