Table of Contents
American billionaire Carl Icahn has sold the former Trump Plaza casino site on the Atlantic City Boardwalk to New Jersey businessman George Norcross III and his family, after several failed attempts to sell the beachfront land.
Icahn's IEP AC Plaza LLC, a unit of his holding company Icahn Enterprises LP, sold the property at 2201 Boardwalk in three transactions totaling about $6.6 million, Atlantic County property records show. The sales, of $5.04 million, $1.26 million and $349,541, were recorded on Sept. 3. The deal became public on Oct. 21, when Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small Sr. confirmed it.
The roughly 10-acre oceanfront parcel sits beside Boardwalk Hall, the city's main arena. Donald Trump opened Trump Plaza in 1984, and it was one of three casinos he owned in the resort town before he entered politics. It closed in September 2014 as the city's weakest-performing casino.
A long wait for a buyer
Icahn took control of Trump Plaza and the Trump Taj Mahal in 2016, when he gained ownership of their bankrupt parent, Trump Entertainment Resorts, after buying up its debt. He sold the Taj Mahal in 2017 for $50 million to a group that included Hard Rock International, which reopened it as the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City.
Trump Plaza proved harder to sell. A ground lease signed in the early 1980s required the owner to pay $1 million a year to the landowner through 2078. Icahn removed that obstacle in December 2018, when IEP AC Plaza paid $3 million for the deed to the land and ended the lease.
The main tower was imploded in February 2021 after years of decay. The site went on the market in 2023 and failed to sell, and it was listed again in September 2025 with no asking price. Marketing materials said the site, which lies in a federal opportunity zone, could take up to 3.5 million square feet of residential, commercial or hotel development.
A smaller tower and a parking garage still stand on the property, and a Rainforest Cafe continues to operate there.
No casino planned
Norcross, an insurance executive and longtime power broker in the Democratic Party in South Jersey, bought the site with his children, Lexi and Alex Norcross, and other partners. His spokesman, Daniel Fee, said the group's plans for the property would be announced later.
The land will not host another casino. "While no additional casinos will be permitted in Atlantic City, we welcome the Norcross team's vision for the property," Small said.
"I'm excited to welcome George Norcross, his family and his business partners to the great city of Atlantic City," the mayor said. "This is the definition of investor confidence."
Local analysts expect a hotel or mixed-use project. Norcross has bought property in Atlantic City before, including the former Formica bakery.
The sale closes out Icahn's long retreat from the casino business. In 2018, he sold Tropicana Entertainment and its properties to Eldorado Resorts and Gaming and Leisure Properties for $1.85 billion, and he sold the unfinished Fontainebleau tower in Las Vegas for $600 million the year before.
Icahn, 90, is one of Wall Street's best-known activist investors. He built his fortune by taking large stakes in companies and pushing their boards for changes, and he controls Icahn Enterprises, which is listed on the Nasdaq and has interests in energy, automotive, food packaging, real estate and pharmaceuticals.
The intelligence satisfies curiosity. The paid briefings satisfy strategy.
Every Monday, Elite subscribers receive an Investor Memo breaking down the deal, the structure and the positioning behind the week's most consequential African wealth story — the kind of analysis that doesn't appear anywhere else.
Twice a month, a Wealth Intelligence brief profiles a single billionaire's holdings, cash flows and expansion pipeline in detail no public source matches.
→ Executive ($25/mo): Daily newsletter + Deep-Dive Reports
→ Elite ($75/mo): Everything above + Investor Memos + Wealth Intelligence + Quarterly Analyst Briefings
Subscribe now
