Elderly Woman Battles Casinos Over Her Home
Even with giant casino hotels dwarfing her crumbling three-story home, Vera Coking refused to sell.
An unlikely player in a real-life game of Monopoly, the feisty widow turned down $1 million at least once for her 30-by-60-foot lot, and now says she wants $3 million.
She may never get it.
Coking watched from the outside as Donald J. Trump’s newest casino project, a 22-story addition to neighboring Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, opened Feb. 16, next door to the home where she has lived for 35 years.
Trump lost out on a bid to have the lot seized in an eminent domain proceeding. So he built around her.
Coking is surrounded on three sides by the casino hotels.
Coking, whose wood-framed house is an eyesore with peeling white paint and a collapsed railing on the second-floor deck, lives on Social Security. Her health is failing, and she is in the process of fighting a condemnation action by the city.
“If they give me the right price, I would sell,” said Coking, who appears to be in her 70s.
Her lawyer, Glenn A. Zeitz, continues to push Trump to buy her out. In recent talks, Zeitz said Trump’s lawyers indicated that they would not pay more than $1 million. He said the house and lot are worth at least $2 million.
Trump’s employees have two words for the 5-foot-5 woman living at 127 Columbia Place. They call her “Trump’s ulcer.”
“This is not an innocent little darling we’re dealing with here,” Trump said recently. “This is a tough, cunning, crafty person who has purposely allowed that property to go to hell, right at the foot of the entrance to Atlantic City, so she can get a higher price.”
Trump said he doesn’t want the property badly enough to pay Coking’s price. Odds are that Caesars Atlantic City Hotel Casino, which is across the street in the other direction, won’t buy it either.
Coking blames Trump for her predicament.
“He never sat down with me. All he did was destroy my house and destroy my health. He should be ashamed of himself,” said Coking, who walks with a cane and speaks with a trace of a European accent.
She has sued Trump over damage to the house during the 1993 demolition of a steel skeleton left hovering just above her house after Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione’s casino project on the site went bust.
She also claimed that Trump Plaza workers dumped snow on her sidewalk, causing her to slip and injure her hip.
Trump said he has offered to paint the house and fix it up, but Coking told him no dice.
