In an article written by Press Staff Writer Joe Weinert in today's article Press of Atlantic City the page four headline goes like this....

MGM MIRAGE TREATS CITY TO ON-AGAIN, OFF AGAIN WIPLASH

ATLANTIC CITY- MGM Mirage has been anything but a steady date for the city over the past 6 1/2 years. Then known as MGM Grand, the company first said in 1996 that it would build a $750 million casino hotel next to Showboat. The city used its power of eminent domain to condemn land that MGM Grand needed, but the project never broke ground.

The company now is trying to sell the Boardwalk casino site.

Immediately after MGM Grand bought Mirage Resorts in June 2000, the newly combined company said it was in a "moving pattern" to build on Mirage's Marina District land.

MGM Mirage in January 2001 vowed to build a casino so spectacular that it "requires our future competitors to improve themselves."

Last October, two months after saying it would spend as much as $1.5 billion on the project, MGM Mirage said it was slowing development plans because of possible competition in New York and other states.

In February this year, the company said it was "picking up the pace of that project again."

Six weeks later MGM said it might stop the project, citing Governor James McGreevey's proposed sales tax on the free hotel rooms and meals casinos give to gamblers. The sales tax idea died; in part due to MGM Mirage's complaints that it was "crazy".

In May, CEO Terry Lanni told hundreds of public officials, gaming executives and analysts gathered at the Mid-Atlantic Gaming Congress here that MGM was committed to building the casino.

Now, the company is "temporarily suspending" the casino project to consider expansion elsewhere.