Who Wants To Live Forever In Atlantic City?

Glenn Straub has bought the former Revel and is planning to help patrons live longer, if he can get the water turned back on

Back in March I wrote an article listing some of the alternative uses for the plethora of empty casinos in Atlantic City. With my tongue firmly in my cheek, and having run out of sensible suggestions, I listed things as ridiculous as a FEMA Death Camp and tried to make out a large building in a coastal urban area would be a suitable replacement for Area 51. One of the more sensible ideas, however, was to utilize the deserted buildings as low intensity medical facilities.

I made it clear the large number of rooms in a centralized location were perfect to render long term medical care, low priority treatments or indeed fill the need for recuperation accommodation and therapeutic treatment facilities in urban areas where new developments are prohibitively expensive. I even went so far as to suggest they might best be used to house members of the armed services who required care following injury or trauma.

Live Forever Poorer
• Casino to offer treatment
• Therapy to prolong life
• Bloody analysis & cryogenics

I did not, I should make clear, realistically think anyone would listen to me, but if you ask a liberal smartarse what should be done with an empty building “hospital” comes up in the first five suggestions regardless of actual practicality of doing so (the others being library, school, community center women’s shelter). Obviously in my pink-fluffy hippy-esque universe these were to be palaces of free care for all, serving the people, healing the sick, curing the afflicted.

This sort of wishy-washy utopianism, however, has little place in reality, but the general concept obviously went over well with one newly installed owner in one of the one time casinos that he, at least, believes will rise again. Part of his plan to offer a whole range of medical and therapeutic treatments to the patrons of the establishment and thus, in essence turning a casino into a hospital, albeit one that will still be a casino according to the gambling news coverage.

Revelations For The Late Revel

Glenn Straub, a wealthy industrialist and real estate developer, for his sins is easily recognizable amongst casino owners in the United States by dint of actually appearing like he still has his own hair, not having fallen prey to either the temptations of the dye nor that of the wig, both of which are much in evidence amongst the possessors of these pleasure palaces, has won the right to purchase the one time Revel casino for the knock down price of $82 million.

The Revel cost $2.4 billion and opened in 2012 to much fanfare, and then rather promptly closed down in 2014 due to, it transpired, serious mismanagement of the construction costs, horrendously burdensome utilities contracts and a rather cavalier attitude towards debt acquisition, things you just don’t get with online gambling sites like Bet365. It might seem, therefore that Mr. Straub is getting a jolly good deal, paying peanuts for a huge facility that will be part of his $1.5 billion plan for the north end of the Broadwalk.

As well as an equestrian center (he plays Polo) and a marina large enough to accommodate the modern hyper-yachts of the very rich, there will be waterparks, a pier and a small airfield to ferry people in to what he envisions as a whole new district to the city. Of course the anchor to all that will be the former Revel, but you have to wonder at the wisdom of standing in front of a casino that closed in two years flat you’ve just bought for a fraction of it’s cost whilst making grandiose promises about the future.

Atlantic City might once have been a haven for those seeking more accommodating US gambling laws, but with so much competition these days from neighboring states, the lustpots of Vegas and the lure of the orient, just what makes Straub think the market can sustain another casino? Straub would be quick to point out this won’t, however, just be a casino but far more than that. He’s planning on offering a variety of longevity treatments that would prolong life.

Paging Doctor Straub……

Whilst getting medical treatment at an actual casino, rather than a building that formerly was one, might seem a little like entering the Turkish lottery, in terms of sensible medical practice, the fact is there are many therapeutic treatments that a real hospital need not be bothered with. Some of them are frankly dubious in nature if you ask me, but I’m not a Doctor, nor is Mr. Straub but that hasn’t stopped him saying “These hospitals in the country aren’t doing what they’re supposed to”.

“Do you want to live to 100?” Asks Straub whose plans involve offering “Everything from drug rehabilitation to cryogenics to monitoring your blood.” Cryogenics, for those of you that don’t know, involves a chamber squirts nitrogen vapor at you, at below 250 degrees Fahrenheit, supposedly stopping muscle damage and preventing inflammation of the joints. All part of the treatment if you want to live longer, and apparently people do.

“I’ve got the money, so I’d like to go ahead and do it.” Straub says by way of example, “and there’s a lot of people like me out there.” Which is debatable at best. Not everyone, for example, is offering tissue grafts and stem cell transplants in their casinos, which Straub will, apparently, and if that isn’t chilling enough he wants to link with Stockton University next door to provide an education facility to tell the old folk about nutritional treatments that will help them remain old folk rather than dead folk.

Soon, according to Straub, you won’t need to play blackjack, or bet on sports in the US to come to Atlantic City, but merely have a desire to live longer. Whether Mr. Straub can make the Revel live any longer remains to be seen, he’s still negotiating a new utility contract with ACR who throttled the casino the first time round for the time being the grand plan to prolong the life of Atlantic City gamblers remains on hold.