Bill would lift deed restrictions on ex-Showboat casino

Restrictions on how Atlantic City's former Showboat casino can be used would be eliminated under a bill moving through the New Jersey Legislature.

An Assembly committee advanced a bill Thursday that would prohibit deed restrictions on any publicly owned building located within the city's Tourism District, including the casinos and beachfront.

Conflicting legal restrictions on how the property can be used scuttled a plan by Stockton University to use the former casino as a satellite campus.

When it closed the Showboat in August 2014, Caesars Entertainment put a deed restriction on it preventing it from reopening as a casino.

But an older restriction requires that it never be used as anything other than a casino.

The bill now goes to the full Assembly. The Senate has already passed it.

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