Raymond Kot Place

It was a very poignant ceremony on Tuesday morning at the corner of Pacific and Pennsylvania Avenue, as Trump Taj Mahal employees, local officials and the family of Ray Kot gathered to rename the block in honor of the much loved casino shift manager who was killed in a back room on the casino floor by a gunman a year ago. It came just a day after the gunman, Mark Magee, pleaded guilty in court, giving a chilling admission in which he said he targeted Kot because he was convinced the casinos were cheating him. That is Kot's wife, Nancy, and his son, Drew, in the photo. Nancy Kot spoke at length, describing how she and her husband met while both working at Resorts, how they drove to work together every day, turning down this same block to park, and waiting for each other after their shifts. Rather than focus on the violence that took her husband away, she thanked Atlantic City "for giving me Ray", and said their story _  meeting as casino employees, falling in love, making a life and family for themselves in Egg Harbor Township _  was truly the story of Atlantic City. The location of the renaming outside the Taj has taken on an added dimension: it is the same street where a North Bergen, N.J. grocery manager drove his car to enter the parking garage on May 21 at the Taj Mahal before being carjacked and later murdered, allegedly by two local lowlifes just out of jail. "It's been a tough year for the Taj Mahal," remarked one employee. But yesterday, Nancy Kot reminded everyone that Atlantic City is also a place where so many people, like Ray Kot, came to be "day one" employees at Resorts in 1978, and never wanted to leave. Here's a picture of the sign as it appears on the street, designating the block between Pacific and the Boardwalk, as Raymond Kot Place.