The retail-entertainment complex at the former Pier Shops will open

A half-million-square-foot retail-entertainment complex at the former Pier Shops will open sooner than expected, with dining directed by noted chef Jose Garces, Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein said at a news conference

The first phase of a $50 million renovation to transform the upmarket but down-on-its-luck oceanfront mall into an all-American party pit called The Playground will open June 26, Blatstein said.

His company, Tower Investments, is “working around the clock” for the June opening of T-Street, an eight-venue music corridor inspired by storied open-air bacchanalia zones such as Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, and Bourbon Street in New Orleans, he said.

The space is modeled after “the incredible things I saw at Beale Street, Sixth Street in Austin and, of course, Nashville,” Blatstein told a crush of reporters before a media tour of the construction site. “We took trips, not just to see the sights but to feel it, to taste,” he said.

Those places, said Bryan Dilworth, who runs Bonfire Entertainment, the firm handling entertainment booking for The Playground, “have an essence of their own.” “We’re going to create that here,” he said.

The project will retain the mall, which is 40 percent occupied, and boost tenancy to 100 percent by year’s end, Blatstein said. Also planned is a 2,000-person concert hall, bars and a bowling alley.

In November, Blatstein’s company was rejected in its bid to build Philadelphia’s second casino. On Monday, the longtime Margate homeowner called that rejection “fate” and said it allowed him to focus his energy on reviving Atlantic City.

Blatstein turned Philadelphia’s sleepy Northern Liberties section into one of the city’s trendiest neighborhoods. On Tuesday he promised that a similar turnaround is in the offing for Atlantic City. “I guarantee it,” said Blatstein, who is prone to superlatives and absolute promises.

At an April news conference he said, “We are going to be the music capital of the East Coast,” and “This place can’t fail. It won’t fail,” and “I promise you this will become the number one tourist attraction in Atlantic City.”

But Blatstein will be operating in one of the most freighted sections of Atlantic City, in the gut of the Boardwalk, feet from a pair of bankrupt casinos and the hulking, closed ziggurat that is Trump Plaza.

Architecturally resplendent, the Pier cost $200 million to develop and was leased by Caesars Entertainment to a string of companies, eventually falling into foreclosure. Blatstein’s company paid $2.7 million for a long-term lease of the complex, although Caesars owns the underlying land, he and his attorneys have said.