Atlantic City Weekly

Click here to watch a video of the Sands implosion

In a town that places a premium on being first, the Sands Hotel & Casino never really had a chance.

It wasn't Atlantic City's first casino; it was the fourth when it opened its doors as the Brighton Hotel Casino on Aug. 11,1980.

When it fell on hard times, it wasn't the first to declare bankruptcy; in 1985, the Atlantis Casino Hotel, formerly Playboy, was the first gaming hall to file for Chapter 11 protection.

And when all was lost, the Sands wasn't even the first casino to close up shop. Atlantis also holds that ignominious distinction when New Jersey yanked its casino license in 1989.

With the ultimate demise of the Sands just a week away, it won't even be the first casino to come down, either. Donald Trump dismantled the Trump World's Fair, formerly the Atlantis, in 2002.

But in her final seconds on the planet, the Sands will finally achieve an Atlantic City first.

At 9:36pm on Oct. 18, following a spectacular six-minute pyrotechnics display by Grucci Fireworks, several hundred pounds of strategically placed explosives will detonate with staccato precision. Then, after hesitating for a couple of seconds, the 23-story Sands hotel tower should fall neatly into itself shrouded by a billowing white cloud of evaporating concrete and 27 years of accumulated dust.

Only then will the Sands be recorded in history as the first Atlantic City casino to be blasted into oblivion.

View of the current Sands site (from the beach side). Photo by Kevin McCarty.

Blowing up casinos has become one of Las Vegas' biggest non-contact sports. Ever since casino mogul Steve Wynn imploded the Dunes Hotel in 1992 to make way for the Belaggio, developers have been blasting casinos in that desert oasis on a regular basis.

One by one, buildings that had only been standing for 30 or 40 years -- some even less -- came crashing down in carefully choreographed nighttime spectaculars, true entertainment events that are the ultimate one-night stands.

The Aladdin came down to make way for the new Aladdin and Planet Hollywood. The Sands was dropped so the Venetian could be built. The Hacienda, Stardust, El Rancho Vegas, Landmark and the Desert Inn were all imploded in the name of expansion and profit.

But a building implosion in Atlantic City is about as rare as a $5 blackjack table on a Saturday night. Only two buildings here have been felled in that manner.

View from the Carnegie Library Center of the pre-demolished Sands. Photo by Alexander C. Marina

In April and May 1972, with no fireworks and only a few hundred spectators, the aging, stately and massive Traymore Hotel, which sat on the empty Boardwalk lot adjacent to the Sands, underwent its trial by fire in a series of three shots spread out over several weeks.

Contrary to modern lore, the Traymore wasn't blown up in anticipation of casinos. It was an old building and very expensive to maintain, and it came down two years before the first statewide gaming referendum, in which voters shot down casinos for the entire state. (It was a 1976 referendum, which confined gambling to Atlantic City, which was successful.)

In 1978, Bally Manufacturing, which had been in the slot machine business, decided to take the plunge into the casinos. It bought the landmark Marlborough-Blenheim hotels and demolished the wood-framed Marlborough with the conventional wrecking ball.