Revel's casino stutters to a close

ATLANTIC CITY - In the end, the Revel ball did not roll off the tower into the ocean, and no buyer emerged in the middle of the night to save the day.

Instead, Revel merely unraveled through the night to an anticlimactic predawn closing Tuesday of its moribund casino floor. Employees of Ivan Kane's Royal Jelly Burlesque Club held a stubbornly spirited after-party as remaining on-duty dealers watched from emptying tables, waiting to inventory final stacks of chips.

One supervisor put fingers to his head like a gun and rolled his eyes. An off-duty employee walked around barefoot. A bartender made a long private apology to a burlesque dancer.

By 3 a.m., the mood as the casino threw in its $2.4 billion towel dissolved into one of boozy futility. Echoing the declining value of the casino itself, bartenders began to hawk bottles of liquor for pennies on the dollar.

"It's a sad and bittersweet thing," said one bartender on her way out for good.

The hotel portion had shut down Monday morning.

It was the back end of a one-two Labor Day weekend punch of casino closings in Atlantic City - the familiar-as-family Showboat on Sunday afternoon, the oblivious-as-a-bad-boyfriend Revel at 6 a.m. Tuesday. The closings left some serious bruising.

"It was just a debacle from day one," said Cesare DeLeo, sitting out on the Boardwalk with a group of fellow bartenders during a fire-alarm evacuation of the place around 1 a.m. - which everyone took in stride as if it had happened many times before.

The group stared up at the already-shuttered 57-story tower looming before them, and the closed Showboat barely visible in the darkness.

Some wondered if the pulled fire alarm might end it all prematurely, in a typically underperforming kind of Revel way. But no, workers were summoned back inside, if only for the final four hours.

And so the darkest hour was indeed just before the dawn as Revel painfully closed its doors not long before the sun rose out over an indifferent Atlantic Ocean.

Mayor Don Guardian rode by on his bicycle a short time later, as if it were any day, or at least any day after Labor Day, when things always feel different. He admitted to feeling sad and a bit less optimistic. He still thinks the casino will sell.

"I have a feeling we'll be back," said bartender Sven Stevenson, 25, presiding over the after-hours party at the bar of Ivan Kane's Royal Jelly, just to one side of the casino floor. At first drinks were $5; by 3:45 in the morning, whole bottles were being sold for a few dollars. Remaining patrons walked around with several bottles on each arm.

At La Dolce Vita, a third party restaurant, an employee cleaning up said the company's three restaurants were not packing up. They are counting on reopening with new owners, he said.

Dancer Donna Yana performed on the Royal Jelly bar and catwalks off the casino floor, and others took their turns posing with her. She has a new job at Providence at Tropicana. "I just love this place," she said of Revel. Like many, she hopes she will return.

"It's been a roller-coaster ride," said Katrina Wilson, a table-game supervisor who left Showboat to work at Revel. She chatted with two colleagues from Showboat, who had just arrived from a party held at the Steel Pier for them. None had new jobs yet.

Gamblers stayed at a dwindling number of table games and slots throughout the last hours. "I'm putting $10 here, $10 there, all my favorite machines," said Doug Linton, who said he was a Black Card holder. Retired nurse Bernadette Steuver gambled away $500 in a slot machine. "I donated to the cause," she said. Paul Skladany won $2,000 at blackjack and quit, as he had boasted to friends he would.

Around 5 a.m., a guy named Nicolai walked away from the final blackjack table with $10,000 in winnings that forced Revel to bring out more chips in the final hour. Overhead music veered from Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" to Al Green's "Love and Happiness." There was talk of going on to Borgata, or a strip club. A woman sat muttering in front of a slot machine. Morgan Capezzera, at the last roulette table that hung on until just before 6 a.m., said as she walked out: "I stole two of every single color chip."

Revel's HQ Beach Club ran out the clock on Labor Day with an appearance by DJ Steve Aoki, which lasted after the hotel itself shut down around checkout time, 11 a.m. Employees, wearing #HQStrong T-shirts, walked out later arm in arm, some dancing through the casino floor.

Perhaps it was fitting that the casino floor was left as the afterthought to the death of Revel. The casino was from the start described as incidental to the overall business plan of Revel, whose management conceived the enormous structure as a high-end, edgy, fast-track resort first, and a casino second. Mayor Guardian advised future operators to think more Fort Lauderdale, less Miami.

Revel's bust was marked by other ironies throughout the weekend. The Hooters gave a weakish ukulele version of Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City," offering up the closest thing to hope in the Boss' worn line "Everything that dies someday comes back."

A lady who became famous trying to bring gondolas to Atlantic City in 2009 was back on the Boardwalk insisting she had offered $50 million to Revel's owners to keep it open.

And the steel letters of Revel on the Boardwalk facade were pried off the tiles of the facade, first apparently by souvenir hunters, then not long after by Revel employees.

Out on the casino floor, the lyrics of a Heart song underscored the feeling of puzzling futility many customers and employees felt at the closing of this brand-new resort: "Try, try, try to understand."

At least during these hours, when what felt like a perfectly nice resort sputtered to oblivion, as dedicated custodians swept and polished and hauled away trash, it seemed pointless.

Measuring Atlantic City's decline by the loss of slot machines. A13.EndText