Vol. 4, No. 11, November 2007
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The Best of Times
A Brief History of the Sands
Since the Borgata’s opening in 2003, Atlantic City has been on a rapid building program. Several casinos—including the Borgata itself—have completed or begun expansions, and several new projects have been announced. But sometimes, in order to build, one must first destroy. Nearly a year ago, for only the second time, an Atlantic City casino closed permanently. During its brief history, the Sands epitomized the best—and worst—of the seaside resort’s casino revival.
At one time, the Brighton Hotel, one of the city’s most famous, stood at Indiana and Pacific avenues. Though the Brighton was leveled in 1958, it remained alive in Atlantic City’s memory, and when a group of local business owners planned a new casino hotel on the site, using the Brighton name seemed to augur well for its chances.
The major stockholders in Greate Bay, the Brighton’s parent company, Eugene V. Gatti and Arthur J. Kania, planned a small casino (at only 32,000 feet, it was about one-fifth the size of the Borgata’s casino today) in a 504-room hotel with little room for expansion.
When it opened on August 13, 1980, the Brighton seemed to have a lot going for it. It was only the fourth casino to open in Atlantic City, following Resorts International, Caesars Boardwalk Regency and Bally’s Park Place.
The Brighton was also the first newly built casino hotel in Atlantic City, making good on a promise that the 1976 casino referendum would guarantee a wave of new construction. But there was no disputing that the casino was, even by contemporary standards, tiny; it was only half the size of Resorts’ and Bally’s gaming spaces.
Indeed, it had auspicious beginnings: the crowd of 1,500 waiting gamblers grew impatient at its opening ceremonies and shouted down a planned dedication speech, demanding that the officials “open the doors!”
But the gamblers apparently didn’t break down the doors for long. By the fall, the casino was losing money ($15.4 million by the end of the year), and though a planned sale to Holiday Inns collapsed, by February 1981 the Brighton was sold to Inns of America, a Dallas-based Holiday Inns franchisee run by the Pratt brothers; the casino’s operating company was later renamed the Pratt Hotel Corporation.
Since the Pratts had just bought Las Vegas’ Sands from the Summa Corporation (which controlled Howard Hughes’ erstwhile casino empire), they chose to rename their new acquisition the Sands, hoping that a bit of the Rat Pack’s magic would rub off.
The Pratts brought in Stephen Hyde and other executives from Caesars, and under the new regime, the property rebounded. However, as Hyde and his cohort moved on to other casinos—and as it became clear that smaller wasn’t necessarily better—the casino lost traction. But the Pratt company remained bullish on Atlantic City, buying the failed Penthouse site and announcing plans for a second casino—Sands Boardwalk—in 1986.
Two years later, the project had become the Sands Hollywood, but it was challenged in the courts by Donald Trump and remained mostly speculation.
In the early 1990s, as the second casino was tabled (it is today the site of Trump Plaza’s North Tower), the possibility of the Sands itself being renamed the Hollywood was mooted. July 1996 was targeted as the date for the transition, but the closest Brighton Park got to Hollywood was the Epic Buffet; the Sands opened a new all-you-can eatery stocked with 400 original props and costumes from Roman and biblical celluloid epics like
Cleopatra,
The Ten Commandments and
Ben Hur.
But the Sands’ performance was anything but epic. In 1996, the Hollywood Hotel Corporation spun off the unprofitable casino, and it filed for bankruptcy in 1998.
In 2000, billionaire Carl Icahn purchased the casino. Icahn turned around the struggling Stratosphere in Las Vegas before selling it in 2007, and it was initially hoped that he could work similar magic with the Sands.
But, under a succession of leaderships, the Sands continued to struggle until, in September 2006, Icahn sold it to Pinnacle Entertainment. Pinnacle closed the casino on November 11, 2006, ending the Brighton/Sands’ 26-year run. Pinnacle is currently planning an as-yet-unnamed mega-project that will encompass the former Sands and Traymore sites.
The Sands went out with a bang on October 18, 2007, but few who worked or played there will soon forget its momentous life as an Atlantic City casino pioneer.
