Qualla: Atlantic Club Casino Hotel

Atlantic Club Casino Hotel: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PJFerrara, CC BY-SA 3.0. Steve Wynn was 38 years old when he bought the Strand Motel on the Atlantic City boardwalk for $8.5 million, tore it down, and built a 506-room casino on the site. The Golden Nugget Atlantic City opened in 1980, financed in part by junk-bond king Michael Milken, and it became the youngest gambler's bet on the East Coast casino business. By 1983 it was the highest-grossing casino in Atlantic City. Frank Sinatra played the 500-seat Opera House. Dean Martin played there. Sammy Davis Jr. played there. Dolly Parton, Lou Rawls, Don Rickles - the Rat Pack circuit of the late twentieth century all came through. Then in 1987 Wynn sold the casino to Bally Manufacturing for $440 million, declared he would never come back to Atlantic City, and left to build the Mirage in Las Vegas. The building he left behind kept operating - under five different names - for the next twenty-seven years.

Image: PJFerrara | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atlantic Club Casino Hotel: Wynn's Atlantic City

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PJFerrara, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Golden Nugget Atlantic City was Steve Wynn's first major casino property and the launching pad for what would become his Las Vegas empire. He had inherited a small Las Vegas casino called the Golden Nugget from his father and rebuilt it into a profitable downtown property in ...

Image: PJFerrara | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atlantic Club Casino Hotel: The Wynn Departure

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PJFerrara, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wynn's public feud with New Jersey gaming regulators became one of the more famous stories in casino-industry history. The regulators required casino executives to comply with intrusive background checks and ongoing supervision; Wynn considered the regulatory burden excessive. In...

Image: PJFerrara | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atlantic Club Casino Hotel: Bally's Grand, Hilton, ACH

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PJFerrara, CC BY-SA 3.0. Under Bally Manufacturing, the property was renamed Bally's Grand Hotel and Casino. In 1996 Hilton Hotels acquired Bally Entertainment and renamed it the Atlantic City Hilton. In 2000 the property passed through another ownership chain - Nicholas Ribis and Colony Capital bought R...

Image: PJFerrara | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atlantic Club Casino Hotel: A Casino for the Rest of Us

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PJFerrara, CC BY-SA 3.0. On February 7, 2012, Colony Capital relaunched the property as The Atlantic Club Casino Hotel with a new slogan: A casino for the rest of us. The pitch was specific - the Atlantic Club would be the city's first locals casino, a smaller, friendlier, less intimidating gambling prop...

Image: PJFerrara | CC BY-SA 3.0

Atlantic Club Casino Hotel: The 2014 Closures

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PJFerrara, CC BY-SA 3.0. On January 13, 2014, at 12:01 a.m., the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel closed permanently. Caesars Entertainment bought the real estate. Tropicana bought the gaming equipment and the customer databases. The two together paid $23.4 million for what Wynn had sold in 1987 for $440 milli...

Image: PJFerrara | CC BY-SA 3.0