The Sands was imploded for a $1.5B resort that never rose

The Sands began as the Brighton Hotel & Casino, opened on 13 August 1980 — Atlantic City's first ground-up casino hotel after legalization — and was renamed the Sands in 1981. In its heyday it hosted Rat Pack-era entertainers, championed poker and VIP perks, and survived a 1998 bankruptcy that ended with Carl Icahn buying the property in 2000. But the Borgata's 2003 opening reset the market, and the Sands — by then the smallest of the city's 12 casinos — could not keep up.

On 5 September 2006, Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment agreed to buy the Sands and the adjacent Traymore site from Icahn for $250 million, planning a $1.5 billion megaresort to open around 2011. The Sands closed its gaming floor at 6 a.m. on 11 November 2006 — the first time in Atlantic City's 28 years of legal gambling that a casino went out of business. About 2,100 employees lost their jobs. 'This is a funeral,' said Sands president George Toth.

Pinnacle made the point irreversible: the hotel tower was imploded on 18 October 2007 — the first casino-hotel implosion on the East Coast — and the parking garage followed in April 2008. Then the project died. Pinnacle cancelled the resort in 2010, and in 2013 the vacant land was sold to local developers for $29.5 million. The casino that closed for a rendering stayed a hole in the ground.