Showboat Atlantic City Opens $7M Arcade, as Resort Continues Family Appeal

Showboat Atlantic City owner Bart Blatstein believe there’s an appetence for non-gaming in town, and he’s ready to gratify it.

Over the weekend, the Lucky Snake at Showboat, a to a greater extent than $7 1000000 investment, opened privileged the former cassino resort. Billed as New Jersey’s largest arcade, the locus features to a greater extent than 300 games, a sports bar, a pugilism ring, e-sports gaming, live entertainment stages, and a speakeasy that pays tribute to the town’s history and involvement inwards prohibition.

What meliorate way to kicking off the family-friendly resort Showboat than to surface up the largest colonnade and sports exclude inwards New Jersey?” Blatstein asked.

The 85,000-square-foot colonnade and amusement blank space features playfulness for all ages, including classics such as Skee-Ball, Pac-Man, and pincer machines, but also the latest engineering games, such as virtual reality.

“People tin can walkway come out of a flick non enjoying the movie. People canful walking out of a cassino and non have got a just time, especially if they turn a loss money. But who doesn’t have got a good time at an arcade? Everybody loves an arcade,” Blatstein added.

Folding on Casino

Blatstein and his Tower Investments tangible acres firm, based inward Philadelphia, purchased the shuttered Showboat inward January of 2016 from Stockton University for $18 million. The schooling sold the belongings after it couldn’t obtain permits to reutilize the resort hotel and its to a greater extent than 1,300 guestrooms into campus housing.

Stockton acquired the resort hotel from Caesars Entertainment, which shut the gambling casino inwards 2014 to slim competition at its other properties in town.

Blatstein’s betimes moves seemed to intimate he would seek to circumvent the deed restriction Caesars placed on the Showboat that prevents it from lodging a casino. In 2019, the New island of Jersey Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) sanctioned of Blatstein’s wishes to rezone and divide the prop into new lots of record.

Blatstein that same year obtained a “certificate of compliance” from the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, the foremost of many steps inwards decorous licensed to operate a casino in Atlantic Ocean City.

There was practically venture that Blatstein would build a new bodily structure on what is currently outdoor beach volleyball courts, and perhaps put expansion slot machines and tabularize games inside. But that is no yearner the case, as the developer is moving full-steam onward with non-gaming.

Arcade Only Beginning

Blatstein says his end with the Showboat is to turn “the first off true up year-around family resort in Atlantic Ocean City.” The Lucky Snake River arcade, which Atlantic City Mayor Virgin Mary Small Sr. calls “a Dave & Buster’s on steroids,” is simply the start.

Blatstein has secured $2.5 gazillion inward yearly taxation credits for 20 years from the CRDA that will assist establish an indoor waterpark. The 100,000-square-foot attractive feature is circle to cost $100 million, and will replace those outdoor beach volleyball courts.

Blatstein is additionally edifice an outdoor beer garden and Boardwalk prolongation to a big sundeck in the sand dunes. Those plans are estimated to cost $29 million.

Blatstein is certainly bullish on Atlantic City’s future.

“Atlantic City’s best days are ahead,” he opined recently. “I record the press sometimes and I mark my head to the dot that I get under one's skin a denuded pick out on it. i don’t cogitate they actualize Atlantic City’s potential.”

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