Billionaire developer Glenn Straub needs to get a New Jersey gaming license if he wants to operate a casino at Atlantic City’s dormant Revel property.

Straub, who purchased the bankrupt Revel casino hotel in 2015 and subsequently rebranded it as TEN, appeared at a meeting of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission (CCC) on Tuesday, where he learned he wouldn’t receive an exemption from the state’s casino licensure requirements.

Straub sued the CCC in November, arguing that since he intends to delegate TEN’s gaming operations to a third-party management company, he is effectively a landlord, not a casino operator. As such, he felt he shouldn’t be required to submit himself and his companies to the standard regulatory poking and prodding in order to determine his suitability to operate in AC.

CCC chairman Matthew Levinson said the regulator recognized “the social and economic benefits” that AC will derive from taking Revel/TEN out of mothballs, “but the environment in Atlantic City does not change the requirements of the Casino Control Act.” Levinson said the CCC “would turn the Casino Control Act on its head” if it bent the rules for Straub.