New Hotel Casino

The project: Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa encompasses 2.8 million-sf of construction across 25 acres. It includes two 44-story glass-clad hotel towers totaling 3,300 rooms and 2.2 million-sf of cast-in-place concrete construction. The casino entertainment facility is a 1.22 million-sf, four-story steel frame structure with 175,000-sf of casino space and over 500,000-sf of retail, dining and spa facilities, plus the 3,500-seat Music Box Theater, a 50,000- sf event center, a comedy club, seven night-life venues including Premier Nightclub (rated as one of the top nightclubs in America), and a 1.53 million-sf, eight-level garage for 5,300 vehicles.

The goal: The Boyd family and MGM Resorts wanted to build the first new casino in Atlantic City in a generation. When the Borgata was under development in the mid-1990s, the Marina District offered the most open space, so the complex was built overlooking the bay, rather than on the Boardwalk.

MEP challenge: The project was built on a marshy property and the entire property built on piles. Solution: All underground services needed to be supported “hung” from the base slab and piles. Utilities were supplied from a third-party central utility plant more than a half mile from the property; design included routing all utilities from the plant as needed.

Structural challenge: The project was built on a marshy property. Solution: One of the towers is constructed of cast-in-place/post-tensioned flat plate concrete; the other of a special combined cast-in-place and precast concrete system.

Outcome: The project mantra was the Borgata would be “the premier go-to property” in Atlantic City. The property opened in July 2003, and after several expansions and many renovations it has remained a premier venue. The Boyd family sold its shares to MGM Resorts in 2016, and the property continues its transformation into a full MGM Resorts property.