By Bruce Klauber
While Atlantic City’s Ritz Condominiums may be the last of the city’s grand hotels still standing and thriving, there are several other vintage properties in the city that currently have a chance at making a comeback. Though not as grand or as successful as the Ritz, they still have concrete possibilities.
The key word here is currently.
Given that various Atlantic City properties have a history of miraculous comebacks through the years, including the rebirth of the Steel Pier and the success of Ocean Casino Resort, there is good reason to believe that the current, less-than-grand state of these properties is only temporary.
Fox Manor
Located at 2707 Pacific Ave. and close to the Tropicana, Fox Manor was originally built more than 100 years ago as the Embassy Apartments. It was purchased by Mildred and Thomas Fox sometime in the 1930s.
The couple changed the name to Fox Manor and turned the venue into a 48-room hotel. Over time the rather elegant Manor gained the reputation of being the perfect spot to honeymoon. The Foxes also kept up with the times. In the 1950s, the hotel was the first in the city to offer color televisions in every room.
By 1987 Fox Manor was still running the property, but it was a shadow of its former self. Around that time the hotel was sold to a Florida developer named Sean Reardon, who also bought several other properties in the area, pledging to “clean them up.”
Sadly, as the city’s fortunes declined, so did the fortunes of the hotel. By 2018 Fox Manor was a certifiable mess. The city found 70 code violations, and there were reports of squatters and drug dealers living there. Finally, Atlantic City deemed it “unfit for human occupancy” and ordered the property vacated. It’s been said that, even at that point, some 25 people were living there.
Despite Reardon’s plans to gut the property and rebuild, nothing really happened until 2022 when an outfit called Atlantic City Beach Properties announced plans to transform it into a 29-unit apartment house.
Reports at the time stated that the plans were approved by the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, and that groundbreaking would be announced sometime that year. There’s no doubt that the Covid crisis was the cause of delay on many projects like this, as was the notoriously slow Atlantic City licensing process. Still, three years after the announcement to redevelop, there has been no progress on Fox Manor. It’s available for $3.5 million.
The Madison Hotel
The Madison Hotel, at 125 South Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd., has also been a victim of the city’s declining fortunes and is also currently vacant, though it was temporarily “saved” several times through the years.
Built in 1929 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the Madison was a 14-story luxury hotel. The first sign of trouble was a bankruptcy in the 1960s, though the venue hung on until 2004 when it became a part of the now-defunct Sands Hotel and Casino.
Despite having troubles of their own in that year, the Sands hoped to expand the number of hotel rooms offered, so they invested a reported $7 million into renovating the Madison. The result was a 126-room hotel, complete with fitness center, which stood as a hotel adjunct to the Sands.
Though the Sands closed in 2006, the Madison continued to exist as a hotel, and in 2014, it became part of the Wyndham hotel chain and was called The Baymont Inn. The Baymont closed in 2021, and the next year, was purchased for $2.5 million by a company called Ratan Hotel Group.
Its final days were unfortunate. Before its official closing in July of 2024, the Madison was being used as a home by 30 squatters who lived there without water or power. It’s been up for sale since last July, and various plans have been floated since then, mostly related to making it a “boutique hotel.” Asking price is $3.5 million.
Atlantic Club Hotel
As reported in these pages last week, there is finally good news on the horizon about the future of the Atlantic Club Hotel and Casino, which has been standing vacant at Boston Avenue and the Boardwalk since 2014. The venue’s owner since 2020, Rocco Sebastiani, head of the Colosseo Development Group, announced several years ago that his company planned to remake the property into a “condo-tel.” One 330-room tower would be a hotel, and tower two would be a 108-unit condominium.
A year ago, the Atlantic City Mayor’s Office confirmed to us that Sebastiani’s plans had been approved, and that Colosseo was merely waiting on approval for various licenses. Nothing happened since that report until just weeks ago.
For various reasons, including the resignation of Anthony Cox, long in charge of handling the city’s subcode licensings, the licensing procedure was moving at snail’s pace. A frustrated Sebastiani decided to bypass the city’s red tape.
He went directly to the state of New Jersey’s Division of Codes and Standards. That department, Sebastiani says, is now allowing him to proceed with the plans for the Atlantic Club, without any involvement of Atlantic City. Lisa Ryan, spokesperson for the state’s Department of Community Affairs, confirms that the State of New Jersey is now in charge.
“The state’s Division of Codes and Standards will now have jurisdiction over the project,” said Ryan. If all goes according to this latest plan, Sebastiani says the project will take two years to complete. It has been recently announced that the Hilton Hotel chain has interest in operating the hotel portion of the venue, once it’s refurbished.
“We recognize the opportunity for growth in Atlantic City and look forward to announcing exciting details in the future,” said a Hilton spokesperson.
When looking at situations like Fox Manor, Madison Hotel and Atlantic Club, I’m reminded of the title of a song recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1980 called “What Time Does the Next Miracle Leave?”
When it comes to Atlantic City’s redevelopment of these and other properties, there are a lot of people out there who hope that miracle leaves soon.
