Union president: Atlantic City casino workers will receive notices warning of possible closure

Workers at Atlantic City's Showboat Casino Hotel will receive notices on Friday warning that the casino may close in two months, a union official said Thursday.

Bob McDevitt, president of Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union, said a Caesars Entertainment executive told him that the casino's approximately 2,500 workers would get so-called WARN Act notices on Friday.

Those notices are required under federal law to give employees 60 days notice that their company could be closing.

Caesars Entertainment officials did not immediately return messages seeking comment Thursday night.

The news of the notices comes as Atlantic City's gambling industry continues to struggle.

The Atlantic Club casino closed in January and Revel Casino Hotel filed for bankruptcy for the second time in little over a year last week.

Caesars CEO Gary Loveman said earlier this year that Atlantic City has too many casinos, and that more need to close. Loveman said during an earnings conference call in May that Atlantic City has been the biggest problem for his global casino company for several years and that one option is to reduce capacity.

"There's much too much capacity in Atlantic City currently," Loveman said in the call. "We've experienced that as the largest provider. So we are looking at all of our options to continue to reduce the cost of doing business here."

Caesars Entertainment and Tropicana Entertainment made a joint bid on the Atlantic Club when it was in bankruptcy court, stripped it of assets including slot machines and other equipment and shut it down on Jan. 13.

It recently sold the Claridge hotel tower of its Bally's Atlantic City property to a Florida company and sold the Atlantic City Country Club to a private buyer. It also is closing a casino in Tunica, Mississippi.

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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC