Trump Taj Mahal closes after 26 years; 5th casino casualty

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Donald Trump opened the Trump Taj Mahal casino 26 years ago, calling it “the eighth wonder of the world.”

But his friend and fellow billionaire Carl Icahn closed it Monday morning, making it the fifth casualty of Atlantic City’s casino crisis.

The sprawling Boardwalk casino, with its soaring domes, minarets and towers built to mimic the famed Indian palace, shut down at 5:59 a.m., having failed to reach a deal with its union workers to restore health care and pension benefits that were taken away from them in bankruptcy court.

Nearly 3,000 workers lost their jobs, bringing the total jobs lost by Atlantic City casino closings to 11,000 since 2014.

Picketers affixed an anti-Icahn poster that they had signed to the casino’s main Boardwalk entrance door. It proclaimed “We held the line.”

“We held the line against a billionaire taking from us!” said Marc Scittina, a food service worker at the Taj Mahal’s player’s club since shortly after it opened in 1990. “This battle has been going on for two years.”

The union went on strike July 1, and Icahn decided to shut the place down a little over a month later, determining there was “no path to profitability.”

The Taj Mahal becomes the fifth Atlantic City casino to go out of business since 2014, when four others shut their doors.

But this shutdown is different: it involves a casino built by the Republican candidate for president, who took time out from the campaign trail to lament its demise.

“I felt they should have been able to make a deal,” Trump told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “It’s hard to believe they weren’t able to make a deal.”

Chuck Baker, a cook at the Taj Mahal since the day it opened in April 1990, was on the picket line at the moment it shut down. He was there when the doors opened and wanted to be there when they closed.

He led a moment of silence among the otherwise rowdy 200 or so picketers on the Boardwalk outside the casino.

“This didn’t have to happen,” he said. “To (Icahn), it’s all just business. But to us, it’s destroying our livelihoods and our families. You take away our health care, our pensions and overload the workers, we just can’t take it.”