New Resort To Follow Pinnacle's $250M Casino Buy

ATLANTIC CITY-This gaming mecca is about to get yet another sprawling casino/hotel/resort property, but will lose a small, older hotel property in the process. The Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to buy 18 contiguous acres along this city’s boardwalk for $250 million. The primary properties are the existing Sands Casino Hotel and the former Traymore Hotel site.

The sellers of the properties are affiliates of financier Carl Icahn, the primary affiliate being Atlantic Coast Entertainment Holdings Inc. (ACE Hi). The major stockholder of ACE Hi, AREP Sands Holding LLC, owns approximately 58% of the outstanding stock of ACE Hi. AREP Sands itself is a wholly owned subsidiary of Icahn’s American Real Estate Holdings LP.

And Pinnacle, which develops upscale mixed-use properties with or without casinos, plans to redevelop the site with an entirely new casino/hotel property. That plan calls for the 26-year-old Sands, one of the city’s smaller hotel/casino properties with 600 guest rooms, to be shuttered and torn down. While the deal isn’t expected to close until year’s end, the agreement calls for the Sands to be closed for good within 70 days, or approximately mid-November.