Right now it's owned by Carl Icahn and his American Real Estate Partners, L.P. who will complete the sale of the property to Pinnacle Entertainment on November 11th.

According to an article in the Courier News newspaper (See link below) the CEO of Pinnacle was asked about the Sands name and this was his response:

Courier Post: You won't retain the Sands name. Why not?

Dan Lee, CEO Pinnacle Entertainment: There are two reasons. First, it's a new place. The Sands opened as the Brighton in 1980, named after Brighton Beach in England. History is fine, but we live in the present. When I was with Mirage Resorts and we tore down the Dunes for another casino hotel, we thought about calling the new place The Dunes. But we wanted to tell people it was a new place, so we called it Bellagio. They didn't call Borgata, the landfill. Second, we don't want to pay Sheldon Adelson
(owner of the Sands franchise) three percent of the room values for using the name. As it is, we have to break the contract with Sheldon. And that's not a small price. A three-year franchise fee runs about $1 million a year. I'd rather pay that in additional severance to the employees. With a new hotel, we'll have a higher room rate, so his contract is more valuable if we do not cancel it. But we'll do it anyway.

A bit of history, The Sands Atlantic City opened as the Brighton on August 31, 1980 and was owned by Greate Bay Casino Corporation which at the time also owned the Sands in Las Vegas, A few years later Greate Bay would file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection and was forced to sell it's majority stake in the Sands Atlantic City, It was able to retain a smaller ownership stake in the Atlantic City casino while it's ownership in the Sands in Las Vegas was sold to Sheldon Adelson which included the Sands name and trademark, The majority stake in the Sands Atlantic City was sold to a new company who later went belly-up and again the Sands filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection, Enter in Carl Icahn who purchased the property through his acquisition of the majority of the bonds issued by the Sands Atlantic City, He intergrated the Sands as part of his casino and hotel holdings which includes the Stratosphere which he purchased out of Bankruptcy when Bob Stupak ran out of money and the two Arizona Charlie locations.

== Rick Schwarz ==