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Cape May developer Bashaw part of group buying A.C. casino land
By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
ATLANTIC CITY- The city's white-hot gambling market is attracting another player.
A casino investment group headed by one of the country's former top gaming executives is buying 11 acres of land from the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort for a reported $88 million, according to industry officials familiar with the deal.
The property includes three blocks at the foot of the Route 40-Albany Avenue entryway, at the southernmost tip of the city's casino zone. Part of the site is where the hulking remains of the ill-fated Dunes Casino Hotel stood for five years before finally being torn down in 1991 after the project went bust.
The land buyers include Wallace R. Barr, former president and chief executive officer of Caesars Entertainment Inc., and Curtis Bashaw, a Cape May hotel owner and real estate developer who once served as executive director of the state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Neither Barr nor Bashaw could be reached for comment Friday. Nicholas L. Ribis, vice chairman and chief executive officer of the Hilton ownership group, refused comment. Other representatives of the Hilton and its Colony Capital LLC parent company were unavailable.
Limited by the relatively small size of the land, Barr and Bashaw reportedly plan to build a smaller, boutique-style casino complemented by nongaming retail and entertainment attractions. They are already lining up retail tenants, officials said.
Hilton, a tiny property that has struggled financially in recent years, will benefit from the deal by getting a cash infusion. Hilton has been hampered by its relatively remote location at the southern end of the Boardwalk, but a new casino next door would generate extra traffic off the Route 40 corridor.
The new casino would rise from the old Dunes casino site overlooking the ocean between Albany and Trenton avenues. The deal also includes beachfront land between Albany and Hartford avenues and adjacent property where the old Atlantic City High School once stood.
Although the former high school site is not zoned for casino construction, a gaming hall would be allowed on the other two parcels, city and state officials said. The site has been waiting for a new casino ever since the unfinished superstructure of the Dunes casino was torn down.
Searching for prime spots, developers have been snapping up the city's few remaining parcels of casino-zoned land to capitalize on the booming gambling market.
Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley recently completed a $70 million deal for 20 acres of oceanfront property next to Showboat Casino Hotel. Morgan Stanley is recruiting a casino developer to help it build a billion-dollar megaresort comparable to Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa.
Gaming giant MGM Mirage controls 55 acres in the Marina District next to Borgata and is studying the possibility of building a multibillion-dollar project similar to its massive CityCenter West development in Las Vegas.
Atlantic City's gaming revenue cracked the $5 billion mark last year for the first time and is expected to rise to $5.2 billion this year, second only to Las Vegas in U.S. casino jurisdictions.
Few people know the Atlantic City market better than Barr, a longtime gaming executive who climbed the ranks to become CEO of Caesars Entertainment. Barr headed Caesars when it owned the Hilton and is intimately familiar with the land he is now buying with Bashaw.
Barr, who lives in Linwood, left Caesars last year after it was acquired by Harrah's Entertainment Inc. in a $9 billion takeover. He walked away with a $26.6 million severance package, according to federal securities documents.
Prior to the Harrah's takeover, Caesars agreed to sell the Hilton and its land holdings to Los Angeles-based investment firm Colony Capital for $513 million. Colony had discussed the possibility of building a new hotel tower and a high-rise luxury condominium on two of the parcels it is now selling to the Barr-Bashaw group.
Bashaw heads Cape Advisors Inc., a privately owned real estate development group based in Cape May. The company's holdings include the historic Congress Hall and Virginia hotels in Cape May, office complexes in Newburgh, N.Y., and housing projects in New York City and Brigham City, Utah.
Bashaw, a close adviser to former Gov. James E. McGreevey, served as executive director of the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority from April 2004 to October 2005. During his reign at the casino-funded redevelopment agency, he launched a $100 million refurbishment of the Atlantic City Boardwalk and vigorously promoted the New Jersey shore's tourism industry.
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