Pinnacle Prairie update

In case you were wondering, the former Sands site in Atlantic City continues to deteriorate. From the AC Press:

The barren site overlooking the Boardwalk consists of little more than mounds of dirt and scruffy tufts of grass peeking through the soil. Intruders are kept out by a padlocked chain-link fence bearing a “No Trespassing” sign.

This is where the Sands Casino Hotel once stood – before the Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment Inc. imploded the old gaming hall to make room for a $1.5 billion megaresort that it once planned to build but has since abandoned.

Pinnacle announced last month it is selling the vacant property, but city officials are hoping the company will dress it up with new paving, landscaping and side

via Once a symbol of future, barren Sands casino lot now just frustrates Atlantic City officials – pressofAtlanticCity.com.

Landscaping would be nice PR, but that’s about it. It should be abundantly clear that there are major structural problems with the Atlantic City casino industry. Even if someone could theoretically borrow the money to buy the Pinnacle land, the return on investment just isn’t there at this point. The catch-22 is that you need someone to build something so incredible that people come to Atlantic City to see it and spend money there, but until someone builds something like that there’s no way to say that it will be successful.

Of course you could say the same thing about several Las Vegas developments, but apparently people have a higher tolerance for risk in Las Vegas. Traditionally Atlantic City casinos have been very conservatively built–look at how long it took to build a hotel with more than the statutory minimum 500 rooms. In retrospect, it looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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