Carl Icahn is officially the owner of Trump Taj Mahal, having received the blessing of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. The OK was given despite Icahn’s having reneged 
on his promise of a $100 million capex infusion into the failing property. New boss Anthony Rodio (right) likened it to his situation when he took over the Tropicana Atlantic City: “The place had just come out of bankruptcy, employee morale was horrible and the customer base was shrinking. All those things are happening now at the Taj Mahal.” Unfortunately for Rodio, Icahn will only give him $15 million to remediate the most egregious shortcomings of the property. These include leaks in the Chairman Tower (named after Donald Trump, not Mao Tse-Tung) and refurbishment of 150 rooms that are evidently in too much disrepair to be rented at present.
Rodio has an unspecified Plan B for the Taj, should casinos be approved for northern New Jersey. “If I can put forth something I can show him that shows whether I will get a return, he’s never said ‘no’ to us at the Tropicana when we’ve come to him with something like that,” he told the NJCCC. At least the near-term fixes, however minor, would seem to indicate that Icahn bought the Taj with a higher goal than merely removing another competitor from the Boardwalk. Besides, if anyone can reverse the fortunes of the Taj, Rodio can.
* Private-sector Class II casinos suffered a setback in Alabama. Lawmakers fell 21 votes short of approving a constitutional amendment that would have extended to operators like Greenetrack the same electronic-bingo games currently offered by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. Having also failed to secure a New York State casino, Greenetrack’s future now looks dim, at best.
* “They could get up and walk. They don’t even need us,” said San Diego County Supervisor Bill Horn after Jamul Indian Village went above and beyond the letter of the law by inking an agreement with the county that approves Jamul’s Hollywood Casino, which is being built for the tribe by Penn National Gaming. One disgruntled resident called the three-story casino “the biggest eyesore in the community” but she’ll have to live with what was the consummation of a 17-year process for the Jamul. The tribe was in a generous mood, pledging $4 million toward road improvement, $275,000 to the sheriff’s department plus an $86,000 bonus to the county. It’s all systems go for the casino, which Penn expects to open this summer.
* Phil Ivey is taking his chances with a British appeals court, asking it to overturn a 2014 verdict which paradoxically found him to be honest but to have cheated Crockfords casino at baccarat. Ivey employed “edge sorting,” a technique at which he is a master, tracking anomalies in the design pattern of cards to track the sequence in which they were coming out of the shoe. As Ivey said earlier, “It is not in my nature to cheat which is why I was so bitterly disappointed by the judge’s decision.” Indeed, if one is an honest cheater, what’s a dishonest cheater?
