Revel closes out on Straub and moves on

The ruling to cancel the purchase of the Revel for $95.4 million by Straub is the second of such deals to fall through. At the time of completion the Revel cost $2.4 billion to build and in all its short life of just two years never made a profit. “The history of this case is long and tortured,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Gloria M. Burns said in a conference call.

After a deadline passed earlier this month for completing the sale, Revel’s attorneys moved to terminate the deal. The judge today approved that decision. Straub’s attorney, Stuart Moskovitz, said they intended to appeal.

“No game ends in the first quarter,” he said in a phone interview after today’s ruling. “There’s still a lot of things to go, not the least of which is there’s no other bidders. There’s nobody else. If we walk away, they are going to liquidate because nobody is going to come up with the money  that we are going to come up with.” “It would be insane for them to allow us to walk away,” he said.

Owners of the Revel say that they have several other parties interested in the resort, and the hope is that the next potential buyer will not suffer the same fate as the previous two.