Atlantic City fining powerless Revel casino $5,000 daily

ATLANTIC CITY -- Atlantic City has started fining the shuttered and now powerless former Revel casino for safety violations.

The new owner of the property was fined $10,000 on Thursday and will be fined $5,000 daily until power is restored to its fire suppression systems, said Chris Filiciello, chief of staff for Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian. The city has also revoked the building's certificate of occupancy.

ACR Energy cut the power after Glenn Straub took over the building. Straub bought Revel on Tuesday but hasn't been able to reach a deal with ACR to provide utility service.

Straub is seeking portable generator trucks to power the complex until he can hook it up to the former Showboat, another shuttered casino next door that he bought last week.

"We used proper protocol to shut down yesterday and we are going through proper protocol to go back up," Tara Lordi, a spokeswoman for Straub and Revel, told the Press of Atlantic City. "We're working as fast as we can. We don't want to have our building burn down, either."

An attorney for ACR said the company is willing to talk about restoring power if Straub can't find an alternate source.

The fire department warned in February that without water flowing through the building's pipes and electricity to get firefighters to upper floors, firefighting efforts at the 47-story building would be next to impossible. At 710 feet, Revel is the second-tallest building in New Jersey, behind the 781-foot-tall Goldman Sachs offices in Jersey City.

Lights at the casino went out Thursday afternoon; water had been disconnected shortly beforehand. The shutoff raised fears that the $2.4 billion building could be damaged by mold, burst water pipes, deteriorating mechanical systems, or be rendered partially inaccessible in the event of a fire less than two months before it is due to reopen.

Straub said he can connect Revel to the utility grid through Showboat, which has its own separate power plant, but it would take about two weeks.

Revel shut down Sept. 2 after just over two years of operation, during which it never turned a profit. Straub bought it for $82 million out of bankruptcy, or about 4 cents on the dollar.