FROM PIER TO PLAYGROUND

ATLANTIC CITY - The pep in Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein's step and his wide grin were beguiling.

He had just acquired the four-story Pier Shops at Caesars - an underperforming, vacancy-ridden mall that sits nearly empty on most days - and yet he acted like he'd just won the lottery.

"Tremendous real estate," he said of his latest canvas that juts out over the ocean.

Blatstein is set to plunk down $50 million of his own money - not including the $2.7 million he paid to buy it - to breathe new life into the mall and make it Atlantic City's must-go-to attraction.

"Oh, my God! Look at this place," Blatstein blurted as he strolled through the rear of the first floor last week. "It will be amazing with the ambiance and kaleidoscope of changes. We're adding a dozen new venues."

Demolition begins Monday on space formerly occupied by water fountains on the first floor to make way for Monkey Bar, a high-tech bar with ocean views on both sides, and T Street, which will resemble an urban street lined with live music (similar to Beale Street in Memphis and Sixth Street in Austin, Texas). T Street will have six themed music clubs featuring country, rock, folk, jazz, rhythm and blues, and comedy.

A beachfront concert venue and a private, over-21 beach club with cabanas and a pool will round out the first floor.

Blatstein, CEO of Tower Investments Inc., wants the entire first-floor renovation done by the Fourth of July weekend. The second floor, to feature Bart Bowl, a large bowling alley with music, food, and drinks, and the third floor with the Varsity Club, a massive sports-viewing bar, by Christmas.

"You have to give people what they want," Blatstein said. "They want entertainment."

The Pier Shops' new landlord then went into some of the retail stores - Guess, Apple, Design Jewelry - and gave employees hugs or handshakes. He called them out by their first names. They all knew his - like Norm walking into Cheers.

"Bart! It's so good to see you again," Guess assistant manager of sales Jannah Tarzona, 21, said as she and her fellow associates lined up to embrace the mall's hoped-for savior.

Tarzona, of Egg Harbor Township, said Blatstein regularly "keeps everyone in the loop" of his plans for the mall that he bought three months ago. A lease transfer issue with landowner Caesars Entertainment Inc., which owns the casino attached to it, was recently resolved, allowing him to finally secure it.

"We're all family now," Blatstein, who commutes to the seaside resort from Philadelphia at least once a week, said as he left the Guess store. "My job is to bring people here and help my tenants. I know I'll be successful if my employees stay after hours to have fun [here]."

It's a gamble he's taking despite the tidal wave of negative news over the last year, including the closing of four casinos.

"People wrote off Atlantic City for the wrong reasons," Blatstein said. "The problem has been a lack of reinvestment and reinvention, whereas Las Vegas got both in the 1980s.

"Change draws people," he said. "Tens of billions of dollars have been pulled out of Atlantic City and never put back in."

The Pier Shops, shaped like a cruise ship bathed in LED lights at night, will be rebranded "The Playground." His target demographic: mid-20s to 40s; single, young professionals with disposable income.

"It's been like a ship just drifting in the ocean," Blatstein said of the mall with a 55 percent vacancy rate. He's pushing for 100 percent occupancy by year's end. "It was such a waste of space. It catered to little kids, and little kids don't spend money.

"You need points of interest where people can meet," he said. "By adding entertainment, you extend your hours and give the restaurants and retail an opportunity to make more money."

Blatstein has plans to add valet parking out front. To get into the Pier Shops, one has to walk in from the Boardwalk, or use an enclosed, second-story skybridge that connects it with Caesars, as Amira Aly, 21, of Manhattan, and her two sisters did last week.

Adding live entertainment and other attractions was welcome news to Aly, but she said the pricey mall could use something else, too: "More shops and more sales." The trio window-shopped and left.

The storied property opened as the Million Dollar Pier in 1906, with rides and games under owner Capt. John L. Young. Back then, it featured "the world's largest ballroom," a Hippodrome Theater, an aquarium, and a roller-skating rink. In 1925, it hosted the Miss America Pageant, and it offered a circus, vaudeville acts, and movies in the 1930s, when George Hamid, a circus owner, took ownership.

"I went there as a kid," Blatstein, 60, said. "I had the best times."

In 1969, a group of local businessmen bought the pier. A fire in 1981 destroyed part of it, and in 1983, the Million Dollar Pier was torn down to make room for the 900-foot-long Shops on Ocean One.

"Those were really the boom days of Atlantic City," said Dee Harjani, 50, a fixture at the mall for 25 years. He started his business selling baseball cards in a mini-kiosk that grew to as many as five stores at the mall selling sports memorabilia. "The '90s were great. There was tremendous traffic in the mall."

But Shops on Ocean One eventually suffered the same fate. It was torn down in 2003 to begin construction of the Pier Shops at Caesars - modeled after a Las Vegas-style luxury shopping mall - a level Atlantic City had striven to reach.

In summer 2006, the Pier Shops opened to heavy fanfare with Armani Exchange, Tiffany & Co., and Gucci, among others, under owner Taubman Centers. But as the national economy tanked in late 2008 and casino competition around Atlantic City expanded, the mall faltered. It was resold in a foreclosure auction in late 2011 and written off as dead.

"This is what Tower Investments is all about," Blatstein said. "I go into areas that are blighted or overlooked and in some form of distress, and bring them back."

He boasts that he transformed Northern Liberties with new restaurants and housing. Same with his projects near Temple University. Tower Investments also took vast tracts of postindustrial properties along Columbus Boulevard and made them into retail, entertainment, and office developments, including Riverview Plaza, Columbus Crossing, and Dickinson Square.

In November, Blatstein lost in his bid to win Philadelphia's second and final casino license. Coincidentally, his proposed $700 million, French-inspired, casino-entertainment complex, the Provence, which included the former home of The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, covered the same amount of space - 500,000 square feet - as the Pier Shops.

Blatstein, who owns a summer home in Margate with his wife, Jil, said he would be checking in often.

"You have homes on Absecon Island that go for $10 million apiece, and where else do you see this amount of ocean?" Blatstein asked aloud as he sipped a Diet Coke and gazed through the window of a third-floor sushi bar owned by Phillips Seafood, another tenant. "There's always a chance at failure.

"But I'll take all bets on this one."