Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino
Encyclopedia
The Penthouse Boardwalk Hotel and Casino was a proposed hotel
and casino
that was to be built in Atlantic City, New Jersey
during the late 1970s. Due to financial
and legal difficulties, the hotel was never completed and a casino license
was never issued.
of Penthouse International, Inc., the publisher
of Penthouse
magazine
. Initial construction
of the project began in 1978, but was halted in 1980 due to financing problems and gaming licensing difficulties. Company
owner Bob Guccione
had made some wildly optimistic predictions in a 1978 interview regarding the casino, saying that a gaming license would be issued in six months, that the casino would open that year, and that another casino (on the site of the Mayflower Hotel) would open the following year.
Boardwalk Properties initially purchased the Four Seasons Motel and the Holiday Inn, located in the block bordering the Boardwalk
, Pacific Avenue, Missouri Street and Columbia Place. They also planned to purchase all the other property on this block, but were stymied by one homeowner, Vera Coking
, who refused to sell out (even at a reported offer of $1 million). The company began construction around the Coking house but had only finished a four-story steel
framework structure when the construction stopped. The structure languished and rusted
there for years until Donald Trump
purchased the property in 1993, demolished
the hulk and constructed the East Tower for his Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.
The company's attempts to get a gaming license were protracted. Penthouse International ran a casino in London, England
in 1971 that was being investigated by Scotland Yard
. The company allegedly allowed non-members and criminal
elements to use the casino. The NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement also was investigating the purchase of one of the properties (the Mayflower Hotel) from a member of a Philadelphia organized crime family.
The casino was initially to be financed from box office
receipts from Bob Guccione
's epic porn
movie Caligula (film)
. When the movie failed to geneate the expected revenues, other financing avenues were sought. During the company's quest for financing, Guccione got involved in the Abscam
sting operation
when FBI
informant
Melvin Weinberg tried to get Guccione to pay a bribe
. Weinberg told Guccione that an Arab sheikh
wanted to invest $150 million in the casino project, but only if the casino had obtained a gaming license. Weinberg wanted Guccione to pay $300,000 to NJ gaming officials to get the license. Guccione responded by saying "Are you out of your mind?" After the Abscam scandal came to light, Guccione sued the federal government, but lost.Penthouse International's search for financing led to other lawsuit
s. Marjorie Lee Thoreson (a/k/a Anneka diLorenzo), the 1975 Penthouse Pet of the Year, won a $4,060,000 sexual harassment
lawsuit against Penthouse and Guccione, claiming among other charges, that she was coerced into providing sexual favors to a furniture
manufacturer from Milan
who could provide financing for the casino venture. However, on appeal, the punitive damages
, representing $4 million of the total verdict, were disallowed. In 1987, Penthouse initially won a lawsuit for $136 million against Dominion Federal Savings & Loan, charging that the thrift
backed out of a financing arrangement for the casino that had been agreed on. However, the judgment was overturned the following year. In 1989, Penthouse also sued Pratt Hotel Corp. (owner of the Sands Atlantic City
casino) for damages in regard to their failing to complete a deal to acquire the Penthouse property.In a related lawsuit filed by the Sands against Donald Trump
, it was alleged that in 1988 the president of Penthouse International threatened to expose Trump's affair with Marla Maples
in its magazine unless Trump stopped trying to block the sale of the Penthouse casino property to the Sands.
Guccione later tried to develop a resort
in a joint venture with Ramada
Inn at a location near the entrance to Atlantic City. That property was sold in 2001 to payoff delinquent loan
s that he owed. He also sold his remaining Atlantic City property, the Mayflower Hotel site, at the same time
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
and casino
Casino
In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...
that was to be built in Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, and a nationally renowned resort city for gambling, shopping and fine dining. The city also served as the inspiration for the American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic City is located on Absecon Island on the coast...
during the late 1970s. Due to financial
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
and legal difficulties, the hotel was never completed and a casino license
Gaming Control Board
A gaming control board , also called by various names including gambling control board, casino control board, gambling board, and gaming commission) is a government agency charged with regulating casino and other types of gaming in a defined geographical area, usually a state, and of enforcing...
was never issued.
History
The hotel-casino was to be built by Boardwalk Properties, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiarySubsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...
of Penthouse International, Inc., the publisher
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
of Penthouse
Penthouse (magazine)
Penthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. Penthouse is owned by FriendFinder Network. formerly known as General Media, Inc. whose parent company was Penthouse International...
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
. Initial construction
Construction
In the fields of architecture and civil engineering, construction is a process that consists of the building or assembling of infrastructure. Far from being a single activity, large scale construction is a feat of human multitasking...
of the project began in 1978, but was halted in 1980 due to financing problems and gaming licensing difficulties. Company
Company
A company is a form of business organization. It is an association or collection of individual real persons and/or other companies, who each provide some form of capital. This group has a common purpose or focus and an aim of gaining profits. This collection, group or association of persons can be...
owner Bob Guccione
Bob Guccione
Bob Guccione was the founder and publisher of the adult magazine Penthouse. He resigned from his publisher position in November 2003.-Early life:...
had made some wildly optimistic predictions in a 1978 interview regarding the casino, saying that a gaming license would be issued in six months, that the casino would open that year, and that another casino (on the site of the Mayflower Hotel) would open the following year.
Boardwalk Properties initially purchased the Four Seasons Motel and the Holiday Inn, located in the block bordering the Boardwalk
Boardwalk
A boardwalk, in the conventional sense, is a wooden walkway for pedestrians and sometimes vehicles, often found along beaches, but they are also common as paths through wetlands, coastal dunes, and other sensitive environments....
, Pacific Avenue, Missouri Street and Columbia Place. They also planned to purchase all the other property on this block, but were stymied by one homeowner, Vera Coking
Vera Coking
Vera Coking is a retired homeowner in Atlantic City, New Jersey whose home was the focus of a prominent eminent domain case involving Donald Trump....
, who refused to sell out (even at a reported offer of $1 million). The company began construction around the Coking house but had only finished a four-story steel
Steel
Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
framework structure when the construction stopped. The structure languished and rusted
Rust
Rust is a general term for a series of iron oxides. In colloquial usage, the term is applied to red oxides, formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture...
there for years until Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...
purchased the property in 1993, demolished
Demolition
Demolition is the tearing-down of buildings and other structures, the opposite of construction. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use....
the hulk and constructed the East Tower for his Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.
The company's attempts to get a gaming license were protracted. Penthouse International ran a casino in London, England
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1971 that was being investigated by Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
. The company allegedly allowed non-members and criminal
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
elements to use the casino. The NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement also was investigating the purchase of one of the properties (the Mayflower Hotel) from a member of a Philadelphia organized crime family.
The casino was initially to be financed from box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
receipts from Bob Guccione
Bob Guccione
Bob Guccione was the founder and publisher of the adult magazine Penthouse. He resigned from his publisher position in November 2003.-Early life:...
's epic porn
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
movie Caligula (film)
Caligula (film)
Caligula is a 1979 American-produced Italian biographical film directed by Tinto Brass, with additional scenes filmed by Giancarlo Lui and Penthouse founder Bob Guccione. The film concerns the rise and fall of Roman Emperor Gaius Caesar Germanicus, better known as Caligula...
. When the movie failed to geneate the expected revenues, other financing avenues were sought. During the company's quest for financing, Guccione got involved in the Abscam
Abscam
Abscam was a United States Federal Bureau of Investigation sting operation run from the FBI's Hauppauge, Long Island, office in the late 1970s and early 1980s...
sting operation
Sting operation
In law enforcement, a sting operation is a deceptive operation designed to catch a person committing a crime. A typical sting will have a law-enforcement officer or cooperative member of the public play a role as criminal partner or potential victim and go along with a suspect's actions to gather...
when FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
informant
Informant
An informant is a person who provides privileged information about a person or organization to an agency. The term is usually used within the law enforcement world, where they are officially known as confidential or criminal informants , and can often refer pejoratively to the supply of information...
Melvin Weinberg tried to get Guccione to pay a bribe
Bribery
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...
. Weinberg told Guccione that an Arab sheikh
Sheikh
Not to be confused with sikhSheikh — also spelled Sheik or Shaikh, or transliterated as Shaykh — is an honorific in the Arabic language that literally means "elder" and carries the meaning "leader and/or governor"...
wanted to invest $150 million in the casino project, but only if the casino had obtained a gaming license. Weinberg wanted Guccione to pay $300,000 to NJ gaming officials to get the license. Guccione responded by saying "Are you out of your mind?" After the Abscam scandal came to light, Guccione sued the federal government, but lost.Penthouse International's search for financing led to other lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
s. Marjorie Lee Thoreson (a/k/a Anneka diLorenzo), the 1975 Penthouse Pet of the Year, won a $4,060,000 sexual harassment
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment, is intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors. In some contexts or circumstances, sexual harassment is illegal. It includes a range of behavior from seemingly mild transgressions and...
lawsuit against Penthouse and Guccione, claiming among other charges, that she was coerced into providing sexual favors to a furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
manufacturer from Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
who could provide financing for the casino venture. However, on appeal, the punitive damages
Punitive damages
Punitive damages or exemplary damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit...
, representing $4 million of the total verdict, were disallowed. In 1987, Penthouse initially won a lawsuit for $136 million against Dominion Federal Savings & Loan, charging that the thrift
Savings and loan association
A savings and loan association , also known as a thrift, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans...
backed out of a financing arrangement for the casino that had been agreed on. However, the judgment was overturned the following year. In 1989, Penthouse also sued Pratt Hotel Corp. (owner of the Sands Atlantic City
Sands Atlantic City
The Sands Casino Hotel was a casino and hotel that operated from August 31, 1980 until November 11, 2006 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was formerly known as the Brighton Hotel & Casino. It consisted of a 21-story hotel tower with 532 rooms and a 5-story podium housing the casino and various...
casino) for damages in regard to their failing to complete a deal to acquire the Penthouse property.In a related lawsuit filed by the Sands against Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...
, it was alleged that in 1988 the president of Penthouse International threatened to expose Trump's affair with Marla Maples
Marla Maples
Marla Maples is an American actress, television personality, and socialite, best known for her marriage to businessman celebrity Donald Trump.- Personal life :...
in its magazine unless Trump stopped trying to block the sale of the Penthouse casino property to the Sands.
Guccione later tried to develop a resort
Resort
A resort is a place used for relaxation or recreation, attracting visitors for holidays or vacations. Resorts are places, towns or sometimes commercial establishment operated by a single company....
in a joint venture with Ramada
Ramada
Ramada is a hotel chain owned and operated by Wyndham Worldwide.- History :The lodging chain was founded in 1953 by longtime Chicago restaurateur Marion W...
Inn at a location near the entrance to Atlantic City. That property was sold in 2001 to payoff delinquent loan
Loan
A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....
s that he owed. He also sold his remaining Atlantic City property, the Mayflower Hotel site, at the same time