The implosion had been scheduled for January 29 but was pushed back due to safety concerns uncovered by workers preparing its destruction. Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, a button will be pushed and Trump Plaza, packed with strategically placed explosives, will collapse upon itself in a matter of moments. Shuttered on September 16, 2014, after several years of benign neglect that accelerated into unsalvageable deterioration, its legacy as a onetime magnet for megafights might remain intact for a while, but the once-glitzy building is about to become a mountain of rubble.
Such is not the fate of Boardwalk Hall’s adjacent structure, Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, a 39-story, 906-room gambling palace that opened with much fanfare on May 15, 1984. But the grand old architectural dame of a once-bustling New Jersey seashore town, its usage however reduced, at least is spared demolition in the foreseeable future, the result of it being designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, constructed in 1929 at a cost of $15 million and renovated over a 3½-year period (at a cost of $90 million) ending in 2002, hasn’t housed a major boxing event in six-plus years.
