Gambling Hall

A Florida company that operates casinos in Mississippi said yesterday that it had agreed to develop the site of the former Riverfront Restaurant & Dinner Theatre on the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia. Casino America Inc. said it would form a joint venture with the theater's owner, Daniel M. Tabas, and with a Louisiana casino developer to build a casino on the 14-acre site - if gambling is legalized in Pennsylvania. Terms were not disclosed. Three other reported deals for riverboat-casino sites have been in South Philadelphia.

The casinos here were a lot like their customers in the first quarter of 1991: Most of them lost money, but a few that were adept at playing the game came away winners. Although the temples of chance in Atlantic City had a combined loss of almost $55 million, all 12 casinos came away winners against their players, beating them for more than $657 million from January through March. The casinos also sold more than $166 million worth of bed space, food and booze for total income of more than $823 million.

Mitzi Briggs, the heiress who lost her fortune when the firm that owns TropWorld Casino in Atlantic City refused to pay her as promised for a casino in Las Vegas, won some vindication this week. The Nevada Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that she is owed $33 million in damages and interest. But she won't get any of the money. The court's ruling dismissed an appeal by Aztar Inc. of Phoenix, which had refused to finish making its payments on the Tropicana Casino in Las Vegas but kept the gambling hall.

Donald Trump, proving himself a high-tech P.T. Barnum, officially opened his Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort last night by rubbing a giant lamp that freed the electronic genie Fabu as a crowd of thousands watched. "Good evening, master. I, Fabu, am here at your service," the turbaned genie's image declared from a giant projection screen set up in the 80-foot- wide, 240-foot-long approach to the largest gambling hall in New Jersey. The Taj, with 120,000 square feet of gaming area and 1,250 rooms, is the first new gambling hall here since the Showboat Hotel & Casino opened three years ago. It cost Trump $804 million and must win more than $1 million per day from gamblers to cover its costs.

On the Strip, the corporate priests who minister in the temples of chance are waiting. The casino executives wait not for the disciples of odds seeking their reward, for they arrive in ever-growing multitudes at this former desert rest stop that is now a sprawling metropolis of 600,000. From every corner of the Earth they come, drawn by the bedazzling forest of lights that are the Strip's trees of life. Instead, the execs are waiting for Trump. Like Samuel Beckett's characters in Waiting for Godot, they seem certain that Donald Trump exists and that, if not today, then someday, he will come.

Elsinore Corp.'s contract selling its failed Atlantis Casino Hotel to developer Donald Trump for $61 million is valid, the state Division of Gaming Enforcement said yesterday. The decision is a serious blow to Atlantis conservator Joseph M. Nolan's efforts to kill the deal. Casino Control Commissioners "should either assume the validity of the agreement . . . or else rule that a valid contract" exists, DGE Director Anthony J. Parrillo said yesterday in a 26-page letter to Commission Chairman Walter N. Read.

At the Garden State Buffet restaurant, a line of 40 hungry gamblers snaked into the hotel lobby, waiting to be seated. Upstairs in the gambling hall, the blackjack tables were busy and low-rollers happily fed quarters into row after row of slot machines. Despite the business-as-usual atmosphere, however, employees at the Atlantis Casino Hotel could not hide their anxiety yesterday as they awaited word on when the failing gambling hall would close. "Things look very bleak," said newlywed James Vandervort, a security guard on the casino floor.

Archrival gambling moguls Steve Wynn and Donald Trump are eyeing the Atlantis Casino Hotel, but for very different reasons. One wants bets, the other beds. The Atlantis will be without a gaming license come Friday - one week after the New Jersey Casino Control Commission denied a casino relicensing for the first time since gambling began here in May 1978. So shrewd real estate buyers like Wynn and Trump figure they can pick up the property cheap. Atlantis president Jeanne Hood, working for months without an investment banker, reportedly wanted $120 million.

New York developer Donald Trump won state permission yesterday to buy control of Atlantic City's oldest casino, despite some lingering questions about his expanding territory in the seaside city. At the end of a lengthy hearing, members of the state Casino Control Commission voted unanimously to approve Trump's purchase of a controlling interest in Resorts International Inc., the company that brought gambling to the Boardwalk more than nine years ago. But the approval came with the condition that Trump, the owner of two other Atlantic City casinos, sell or close one of the two casinos that he will acquire along with Resorts - the Resorts International Casino Hotel and the still-unfinished Taj Mahal casino.

Gary Israel surveyed the sprawling facility with unabashed pride. It was a bowling center, but not just any bowling center. This was the state-of-the- art 60-lane operation that is an integral fixture of the new Showboat Hotel, Casino & Bowling Center. The bowling center is part of the reason they are calling this everyman's hotel-casino. This one's for "the people" (and that includes families). Middle America. Not just high rollers. Small wonder the Showboat was Atlantic City's No. 1 tourist attraction this week - even though, once again, a planned date for letting the public inside came and went.