First Revel wanted Glenn Straub to buy their casino. Then it seemed that nobody wanted Straub to buy the casino. Now, Straub may be the only hope for the casino to sell. On Tuesday, Revel filed an emergency motion to terminate its deal with Brookfield US Holdings, and requested that Straub be made the backup bidder.
The filing came after weeks of speculation whether Brookfield would back out of their deal with the bankrupt casino. Brookfield announced last month that they would terminate their agreement with Revel following their inability to negotiate terms with the casino’s power provider. Attorneys with Revel continued to try to negotiate to save the deal, but those efforts have appeared to fail.
Negotiations Fell Apart After New Demands by Brookfield
Revel attorneys had been in negotiations with Brookfield following their initial announcement to back out of the deal. Those negotiations were reportedly ongoing through last week, but sources with Revel revealed this week that Brookfield had demanded a series of new financial terms to the agreement, terms that Revel was unable to meet.
Brookfield was the winner in the Revel auction back in September following a heated auction with Florida real estate tycoon Glenn Straub. Straub was the staking horse bidder at $90 million and the price eventually reached $110 million before Brookfield was declared the winner.
Straub has fought the auction process at nearly every turn and was reportedly in the process of appealing the decision awarding Brookfield the winning bid. He went as far as to claim that Brookfield backed out of the deal because they felt he would win his appeal. Tuesday’s filing would award the Revel to Straub at a bid of $95 million.
Straub Not a Good Fit According to One Analyst
Following Brookfield’s announcement last month, Straub revealed that he is still interested in buying the Revel. However, some feel that he is not a good fit for the casino. Global Gaming Business magazine analyst Roger Gross spoke with KYW Newsradio on Wednesday and said that he was “a little fearful about what’s going to happen here, frankly, because he hasn’t given a vision for what he wants to do with the property, and some of the things we have heard have been kind of wild, off-the-wall ideas.”
Straub also spoke with KYW on Wednesday and told the station that he is keeping his options open. He said that he wasn’t going to explain his plans ahead of time unless it was a condition of the bid, and such conditions were not part of the Revel auction. Some of the plans that he has hinted to in the past included a “genius University” as well as a toned-down casino presence in the property.
A hearing on Tuesday’s emergency motion is scheduled for Friday. Straub has stated he may not attend the meeting. If he is awarded the bid, he will still have to face the same issues that Brookfield walked away from, including over $158 million in financing debt that the casino’s former power provider, ACR Energy Partners, refuses to negotiate on.