Crumbling Trump Plaza in Atlantic City will be DETONATED today

The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey will be demolished on Wednesday morning – seven years after it closed for business. 

The establishment, which opened back in 1984 and became a popular tourist spot on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, will be imploded at 9am after falling into such disrepair that chunks of the building began peeling off and crashing to the ground.

Demolition work began on the structure last year, and the rest of the complex was initially set to be destroyed three weeks ago, before it was pushed back due to safety concerns

Explosives have now been positioned at strategic points along the building’s support structures which will knock its legs out from under when the detonation button is pushed. 

‘It will crumble like a deck of cards,’ Fire Chief Scott Evans chief told The Associated Press.   

The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino once attracted A-list celebrities and became the place where the future president honed his instincts for bravado and style. 

However, Trump cut ties with the venue back in 2009, when it was purchased by billionaire Carl Ichan.  

‘The way we put Trump Plaza and the city of Atlantic City on the map for the whole world was really incredible,’  Bernie Dillon, the events manager for the casino from 1984 to 1991, told the Associated Press on Wednesday. 

‘Everyone from Hulk Hogan to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it was the whole gamut of personalities. One night before a Tyson fight I stopped dead in my tracks and looked about four rows in as the place was filling up, and there were two guys leaning in close and having a private conversation: Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty.’

‘It was like that a lot: You had Madonna and Sean Penn walking in, Barbra Streisand and Don Johnson, Muhammad Ali would be there, Oprah sitting with Donald ringside,’ he recalled. 

‘It was a special time. I’m sorry to see it go.’ 

Ron Gatewood, a food and beverage worker at Trump Plaza from 1986 until its closing in 2014, brought food and drinks to stars including Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross and Barry White in their hotel rooms.

‘They were very down-to-earth people,’ Gatewood recalled. ‘They never made you feel less-than. They tipped very well. Well, some did, anyway.’

The casino even had a cameo in the film ‘Ocean’s Eleven.’ When George Clooney and Brad Pitt recruited actor Bernie Mac´s character to help with a Las Vegas casino heist, they plucked him from Trump Plaza, where he was a dealer.

However, things began to sour for Trump Plaza when Donald Trump opened the nearby Trump Taj Mahal in 1990, with crushing debt loads that led the company to pour most of its resources – and cash – into the shiny new hotel and casino.

The Trump Taj Mahal, one of the casinos acquired by Icahn, has since reopened under new ownership as the Hard Rock.

Trump Plaza was the last of four Atlantic City casinos to close in 2014, victims of an oversaturated casino market both in the New Jersey city and in the larger northeast. There were 12 casinos at the start of 2014; there now are nine.

By the time it closed, Trump Plaza was the poorest-performing casino in Atlantic City, taking in as much money from gamblers in 8 1/2 months as the market-leading Borgata did every two weeks.