It’s been almost a year since the Seminole Tribe of South Florida — which owns the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino brand – announced it had purchased, with two local businessmen, the shuttered Taj Mahal with the intention of spending as much as a half-billion dollars to turn it into a Hard Rock-branded property.
So, we thought an update is an order, and Matt Harkness, president of what is officially dubbed Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City was kind enough to oblige during a recent phone chat. To answer the obvious first question, an opening date has not yet been fixed. All Harkness would say is that the doors to the adult playpen will swing open sometime this summer.
But, he promised, when that happens, visitors will find few reminders of what was, for more than two decades, the flagship of Donald Trump’s Atlantic City gambling empire….“Every inch of the building is going to be completely redone,” said Harkness, who spent 15 years working as a Trump executive in A.C. (including a stint as the CEO of Trump Plaza). “We’re going all the way down to the concrete– in the hotel rooms, the casino floor, the restaurants. It’s a complete transformation of the property, including the exterior. People won’t recognize the look of the place.”