A four-level building stands on the pier at Arkansas Avenue and the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey, directly facing Caesars Atlantic City. Its floors were laid out for luxury shops.
The pier first carried Ocean One, a three-level mall that opened in 1983 with dining decks over the water. By 1986 that mall held 125 shops, seven restaurants, and miniature golf.
In 2023 a film studio, ACX1 Studios, took a master lease on the pier and planned to shoot in its empty kitchens and storefronts. The studio opened to the public under its own name that September.
ACX1 filed for bankruptcy in March 2026, and its lease was terminated that April. Caesars has run the building itself since then, and the top floor is marketed for weddings and events.
Million Dollar Pier comes down, Ocean One rises
Million Dollar Pier had run out over the ocean from the Boardwalk since 1906, a wooden amusement pier with an aquarium, a ballroom, and a theater.
It was being phased out from around 1980, and fire hit it in 1981.
A construction contract signed on October 1, 1981, set Ocean One in motion, and reconstruction replaced both the wooden deck and the old pilings with concrete and steel.
The new building was planned while casino construction was pushing many smaller businesses off the Boardwalk.
Ocean One opened on April 28, 1983, as a three-level mall for shopping and recreation on the rebuilt pier at Arkansas Avenue and the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Visitors could shop and eat there without walking into a casino, and the $40 million project was the first major non-gaming development to open in the city after casinos arrived.
A larger building has since taken its place on the same pier.
From the Boardwalk, a ramp led up into a building designed as an Art Deco ocean liner.
It ran roughly 900 feet, and about half of that length stood over the Atlantic.
Its roof and side decks held dining and seating space open to the ocean air, and the casino buildings around it generally had nothing like them.
In 1986 Ocean One had 125 shops, seven restaurants, a second-floor food court, and miniature golf.
Caesars buys the mall and plans a casino
The pier sat directly in front of Caesars Atlantic City, and a large Caesars billboard had stood on Ocean One's Boardwalk-side deck since the mall opened.
In 1996 Boardwalk Regency Corporation, the company that operated the casino, bought the mall itself.
In August 1997 Atlantic City opened its ocean piers to casino gaming, but capped gaming at 35 percent of enclosed pier space.
Caesars had already unveiled a $250 million Poseidon-themed redevelopment of Ocean One, again using an ocean-liner design.
The remaining enclosed space was reserved for retail, entertainment, or hotel use. Ocean One had cost $40 million to build.
The casino was never built, and Ocean One went on as a mall.
Ocean One is stripped to its frame
In 2002 a plan was announced to close Ocean One and rebuild it for upscale shopping and dining.
More than 100 merchants had to leave by the end of that year, and construction began in December. The mall was taken down to its structural frame.
Caesars kept the pier. In May 2003 it signed a 75-year lease with the developers rebuilding it.
Their first completion target had been late 2004, and by 2003 the schedule had slipped by roughly six to nine months, with a New Jersey tax dispute among the causes.
The opening was later pushed into 2006.
The new building kept the pier's footprint and added a fourth level.
On the second floor, an enclosed skybridge crossed over the Boardwalk into Caesars, and the higher-end shops lined that level.
The Pier Shops at Caesars began opening in phases in June 2006.
A luxury mall that opened unfinished
By April 2007 the Pier Shops had Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., and Apple, among 81 stores and restaurants open out of about 100 planned.
Final lease-up was still running behind schedule in 2007.
RumJungle and English is Italian, two restaurant concepts that had signed on, never opened at all.
Taubman Centers took control of the Pier Shops' leaseholding venture in 2007.
By September 2009 it had decided to stop putting more money into the mall.
The property was not generating enough cash to meet its mortgage and operating expenses, and tenant sales were one of several problems.
The mortgage went into default, and the lender completed foreclosure on November 14, 2011.
The lender still held the mall in 2014, when it was roughly 40 to 50 percent occupied.
Fountains out, bars in
The Water Show, the indoor fountains with lights and music at the ocean end of the 2006 building, had stopped operating.
In late 2014 the lender sold the long lease on the building for $2.7 million to Tower Investments.
Caesars, which still owned the pier underneath, sued in early 2015 to challenge the transfer, arguing that a transfer of the lease required its approval.
The two sides reached a working arrangement that let the new project open.
Tower Investments pulled the fountains out and turned the first floor into T Street.
At the ocean end were a concert area and beer garden, with eight bars and live-music venues spread through the new entertainment strip.
The work took about 12 weeks. The rebuilding before it had run from December 2002 to June 2006.
T Street opened to the public at 5 p.m. on June 26, 2015, and the pier took the name The Playground.
Buddakan and Continental, two large restaurants that had opened in late 2006, renewed their leases for the new phase.
Over the next several years, many of the luxury stores left, Apple and Gucci among them.
A studio lease ends in bankruptcy court
Caesars took over operation of the pier on January 28, 2020, as Tower Investments sold its interest back.
Pandemic shutdowns began that March. Buddakan and Continental never reopened, and the building was mostly vacant by 2023.
ACX1 Studios took a master lease from Caesars, effective August 1, 2023, to use the pier for film, music, events, and dining, and it opened to the public under its own name that September.
On the third floor, where the 2006 building had put restaurants and a lounge with sand and Adirondack chairs beside a long glass wall, ACX1 planned studio sets and sound stages.
It also planned to use the building's 17 existing kitchens and its empty storefronts as sets already in place, which would cut down on new set construction.
The fourth-floor wedding and event venue from the 2006 building had reopened by August 2024.
ACX1 filed for bankruptcy on March 13, 2026. On April 27 the court converted the case to Chapter 7, and the master lease was terminated the same day.
A live-music venue for 2,500 to 3,000 people, called Summerland Ballroom, has been marketed for the pier in 2026.
In 1997 Caesars announced a $250 million casino for this pier.
It has operated the building itself since the ACX1 lease ended, and the top floor is marketed for weddings and events.
Below it, the floors built for luxury shoppers hold a large amount of former retail space.
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