Atlantic City casinos get their AC back

ATLANTIC CITY - Cooling operations have restarted at two Atlantic City casinos that have been without air-conditioning since early Thursday.

Pepco Energy Services Inc. owns the power plant that provides cold water for the cooling systems at Trump Plaza Hotel and Caesars Atlantic City. Both were getting partial cooling by Saturday afternoon, a spokesman said, with the expectation that system capacity would increase throughout the day and into Sunday.

At the plant, a leaky underground pipe was being excavated and will take four to six weeks to be fully repaired. Temporary systems are being used to cool the venues while repairs continue.

Caesars Atlantic City was open and drew sparse crowds Saturday. Trump Plaza was not scheduled to open until Sunday afternoon. The closing could cost Trump Plaza several million dollars.

It is rare for an Atlantic City casino to close temporarily. Besides a three-day state government shutdown in 2006, the only other time in recent history that casinos closed briefly was when Hurricane Gloria moved up the East Coast in September 1985, said Dan Heneghan, a spokesman for the Casino Control Commission. In the 1980s, Caesars was shut down for one day as a penalty for regulatory violations, Heneghan said.