Revel: We'll scrap sale deal if it doesn't close by midnight
By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Feb 9, 2015 5:19 PM CST
This May 30, 2014 photo shows the HQ day club at Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City N.J. The $2.4 billion casino closed on Sept. 2, 2014, but its sale is being delayed by objections from HQ and other tenants at the casino who are afraid their $16 million investment will be wiped out if the new buyer...   (Associated Press)

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — The last remaining plan to sell Atlantic City's former Revel Casino Hotel appeared dead Monday as its owners said they planned to terminate a deal to sell it to a Florida developer.

Revel attorney Michael Viscount said the casino plans to cancel its agreement to sell to Glenn Straub if the deal did not close by midnight Monday, the deadline for the sale to go through. Straub's attorney said there's no way the deal can be completed by then due to lingering uncertainty over the legal rights of business tenants at the former casino, and of its utility provider.

The collapse of the Straub deal would mark the second time a buyer has been unable to complete a purchase of the star-crossed casino, which cost $2.4 billion to build, never turned a profit, and closed on Sept. 2, 2014 after just over two years of operation. In November, Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management pulled out of a deal to buy Revel for $110 million.

"At 12:01 a.m. we are going to ask the judge to terminate the agreement," Viscount said. "We need to come up with a Plan C really quickly."

Straub wants a bankruptcy court judge to approve an extension of the sale deadline to Feb. 28; a hearing on that request is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

His attorney, Stuart Moskovitz, said Revel does not have the legal right to terminate the deal and keep Straub's $10 million deposit.

"If Revel terminates this contract, it will cost them tens of millions of dollars," he told the Associated Press. "They will never get a bid at these numbers. From Day One, Revel was a disaster, in every way imaginable."

The apparent demise of the deal came after U.S. District Court Judge Jerome Simandle refused to let the proposed sale go through without taking into account the legal rights of a nightclub and restaurants at the former casino, as well as its utility provider, all of which are appealing a previous court ruling that the sale can go forward "free and clear" of their leases.

The judge issued a temporary stay on Monday, allowing the sale to proceed but saying it could not do so without taking the appellants' rights into consideration in the purchase. That left Straub unable to close on a deal, according to his lawyer.

"We can't close if we have no idea what we're closing on," Moskovitz said.

The deal had been progressing toward Monday's closing date, until a federal appeals court sided with the tenants late Friday and issued a partial stay of the sale. Monday's continuation of that stay appeared to be the last straw. The judge explicitly said that nothing in his order prevented the sale from closing, but the buyer disagreed.

Last week, the CEO of the Hard Rock franchise obtained preliminary authority to own a casino in Atlantic City, and indicated the company had spoken with Straub about a possible involvement in re-opening Revel. But Viscount said Hard Rock was never interested in buying it.

Straub had proposed re-opening Revel under a different name as a smaller casino, a water park, hotel and condominiums.

Viscount said that by keeping Straub's $10 million deposit, "there's a lot of things we can do to keep the ship afloat for a while."

Revel also kept an $11 million deposit from Brookfield when that deal fell apart.

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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

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