“If you were in some other place, there was some nervousness as to what might happen.” “If you were a Hard Rock or Ocean employee, it was an exciting, opportunistic time,” said Mike Sampson, Hard Rock's general manager, who has worked there since the day it opened. On June 27, 2018, the former Trump Taj Mahal reopened as Hard Rock, and the former Revel reopened as Ocean.
Hard Rock and Ocean still have not dethroned the Borgata as Atlantic City's top casino, but they have taken some of its market share. Yet some worried that the market that forced them to shut down in the first place could not handle two additional casinos, and that reopening them would be repeating the costly mistakes of the recent past.įive years later, those two casinos - the Hard Rock and the Ocean Casino Resort - have become among the most successful in Atlantic City.Īnd while they have taken market share from their seven competitors, no one has gone out of business and the market as a whole seems to be adjusting to the new reality, in which there are three dominant casinos - and everyone else. People were glad that the 6,000 jobs that were lost when the former Trump Taj Mahal and Revel casinos closed were coming back. Five years ago, there were mixed emotions in Atlantic City as two casinos that had failed and shut down were set to reopen with new owners and new identities.
