ATLANTIC CITY, NJ-Park Place Entertainment, owner of Caesar's Atlantic City and the Ocean One Mall, will shut down the half-million-sf shopping complex/pier for a year and a half to redevelop it into “something very dramatic” according to company officials. The price tag for the makeover has been put at $100 million.
Ocean One Mall sits directly across the famed boardwalk from Caesar's, extending some 900 feet into the Atlantic Ocean. In Atlantic City's heyday, it was known as the Million Dollar Pier, but was redeveloped as a mall, resembling an ocean liner, in the early 1980's. Several years ago, Caesar's proposed to redevelop it as a 250-room hotel complex, but the project was put on hold when Park Place Entertainment acquired Caesar's.
Under the new proposal, the complex will be shut beginning around the end of this year. Caesar's president Paul Henderson has sent a letter to the 100 or so retail tenants stating that “construction of our new project will begin immediately [after the closing], with a grand opening scheduled for the spring of 2004.”
Park Place has signed a deal with the New York City-based Gordon Group, which will complete the renovation project and then manage and lease it afterwards. Under the terms of the agreement, Park Place/Caesar's will continue to own the property, but will apparently put none of its own money into the actual redevelopment. Park Place is planning to foot the bill for a new footbridge connecting the casino/hotel with Ocean One.
“We've been saying that we plan to redevelop the pier,” according to Robert Stewart, a spokesman for Park Place. Further details of what they have planned for the makeover has not been released. Company officials will only say that they will announce further details at the Spring Convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers in Las Vegas next month. Las Vegas, incidentally, is the site of one of the Gordon Group's biggest triumphs—the company teamed with the Simon Property Group to develop the highly successful Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace.
With the facility completely shut down, the 100 tenants will have to find a new place to do business after the end of the year. According to Park Place officials, all but three of the tenants have been operating under month-to-month leases anyway, which was a sign to many that something was in the works.
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