Showboat Atlantic City Faces Foreclosure After 17 Months of Missed Payments
Computershare Trust Company, acting as trustee for a loan originally issued by Barclays Capital Real Estate, has filed to foreclose on Showboat Atlantic City, alleging the property has made no debt-service payments since April 2025. The lender's complaint puts the outstanding balance at $48.5 million and says it has separately advanced nearly $970,000 to cover unpaid insurance premiums on the property.
Who owns Showboat, and what the lender is asking for
Showboat has been owned by Philadelphia real estate developer Bart Blatstein since he acquired it in January 2016 for $23 million, converting the former casino into a non-gaming hotel, water park, and entertainment property. The Barclays-originated loan on the property dates to October 31, 2022. In its complaint, Computershare alleges the property has also fallen behind on property taxes in addition to loan payments, and it's asking the court to move to foreclosure "without delay" rather than pursue a longer workout process.
The property owner's response
Blatstein's legal team has acknowledged the unpaid debt but disputes that foreclosure is the right remedy, telling the court that "business is strong" at the property and that the obligations are "being addressed." As a counter-proposal, Blatstein's side has asked the court to appoint a rent receiver — a court-supervised manager who would collect the property's revenue and apply it toward the debt — rather than proceed directly to foreclosure and a sheriff's sale. The property's operators say Showboat serves roughly 1.2 million guests a year and employs about 500 people. A court decision on how to proceed is expected around October 9, 2026.
Why it matters for Atlantic City's casino market
Showboat's non-gaming pivot has made it something of an outlier on the Atlantic City boardwalk, and a foreclosure fight here says less about gaming revenue trends than about commercial real estate debt taken on a leisure property. Still, it lands amid a stretch of uneven results across the boardwalk's traditional casino-hotels, where in-person revenue has been mixed even as the state's online casino and sports betting figures keep climbing. Anyone with a reservation or event booked at Showboat isn't affected immediately — the property continues normal operations while the foreclosure case proceeds through the courts.