Monday at dawn marks the end of the Donald Trump era in Atlantic City, the New Jersey seaside resort from which he extracted hundreds of millions of dollars while doing as little as he could for the town.

About 3,000 workers will lose their jobs when the Trump Taj Mahal casino hotel, a business involved in six bankruptcies and one privately negotiated deal to escape paying the debts Trump ran up, closes.

From 1984, when the Trump Plaza casino opened at the best Boardwalk site, until investors paid Trump to go away seven years ago, Trump dominated Atlantic City so thoroughly that when I covered the casino industry, some called the resort town Trumpville.

At one time Trump ran four casinos here, though the law only allowed an owner three. To get around that, he built a walkway from Trump Plaza to the old Atlantis — which, like its mythic namesake, has since disappeared, sunk by a sea of red ink and then demolished. The Plaza sits empty, as will the Taj Mahal today.

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