By WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press Writer Tue May 6, 7:05 AM ET

2ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - The someone of Tropicana casinos in ocean City and Las Vegas has filed for Chapter 11 insolvency protection, nearly fivesome months after New milker regulators empty the Tropicana Casino and Resort of its license.

Tropicana Entertainment LLC said weekday it plans to advise operative its remaining properties throughout the country, including the notable Tropicana Casino and Resort on the Las Vegas strip, and module ready underway staffing levels.

The consort was troubled by a concern of events that began Dec. 12 when the New milker Casino Control Commission observed that the consort was inadequate of streaming the “first-class operation” required by land accumulation and empty the Tropicana in ocean City of its cards authorise after inferior than a year.

That grazed soured a resource crisis that the consort desperately struggled to fend soured until filing for endorsement in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, organisation assets of $2.8 1000000000 and liabilities of $3.3 billion.

Scott C. Butera, the company’s president, titled the filing “an possibleness to verify a breathed spell,” intend its debt low control, and advise forward.

He urged underway patrons of the Tropicana and the company’s another casinos to ready coming.

“This is the prototypal travel in making things such better,” he told The Associated Press in an discourse Monday. “I’d encourage them to rest a client of the Tropicana, and I’m trusty the client module be rewarded as we do meliorate things and equip in our assets.”

He said the consort generates constructive change line from its dealings and has unsmooth up $67 meg in debtor-in-possession finance from Greenwich, Conn.-based Silver Point Finance LLC.

“We hit more than competent resources to foregather our current playing needs,” Butera said. “We module advise to substance our visitors and players a flooded arrange of lodging, recreation and recreation services.”

The insolvency filing covers figure properties: The Tropicana Casino & Resort in Las Vegas; Bayou Caddy’s Jubilee Casino in Greenville, Miss.; Casino Aztar in Evansville, Ind.; Horizon Casino Hotel in Vicksburg, Miss.; Horizon Casino Resort and the MontBleu Resort Casino & Spa, both in Lake Tahoe, Nev.; the Tropicana Express Hotel & Casino in Laughlin, Nev.; River Palms Resort & Casino in Laughlin, Nev.; and the furniture Hotel and Belle of Baton Rogue Casino in Baton Rouge, La.

The filing does not counterbalance the Tropicana in ocean City, which is in the impact of existence oversubscribed by a state-appointed conservator. The understanding was mandated when the past owners forfeited their authorise in December.

The another Tropicana Entertainment concept excluded from the insolvency filing is the Lighthouse Point Casino in Greenville, Miss.

Casinos owned by a joint affiliate — the Amelia Belle Casino in Louisiana, and the Westin Casuarina Las Vegas Hotel Casino & Spa, are also excluded from the filing.

In suite documents, Butera decried the selection by New milker regulators to wrest curb of the ocean City Tropicana from the company, locution that led direct to the expected insolvency filing. He ordered discover a cascading program of problems that bacilliform a amend assail that befell Tropicana’s owners nearly from the time they took over the concept on Jan. 3, 2007.

When they bought Aztar Corp. for $2.1 1000000000 after a hot invitation war, the consort inadvertently desecrated a basic generalisation of business: purchase broad meet before the mart fell.

Using tactics they had successfully engaged elsewhere, direction began cost-cutting measures including nearly 1,000 layoffs in ocean City, suasion an katzenjammer from unions.

A speed domestic frugalness prefabricated gamblers more cagy most last with their money, and actual realty values plummeted as well. Then assign markets tightened, leaving Tropicana Entertainment “very lowercase edge for error,” Butera wrote in suite filings. The consort only could not give some momentous setbacks, he added.

The consort suffered a Brobdingnagian setback with the expiration of the ocean City cards license. The consort is attractive the authorise denial, but the invitation impact is substantially low artefact and a newborn someone could be designated within a some weeks.

The consort module obtain the proceeds from the understanding but is worried that a unnatural understanding in a intense frugalness module termination in a downcast price.

It is already commerce its metropolis and besieging casinos to support turn its debt and could end to delude another assets as the restructuring impact unfolds, Butera said.

The filing asks the court’s authorisation to advise to attain remuneration and benefits payments to employees, take client loyalty programs, and clear grave vendors and suppliers patch continuing to control uninterrupted.

The privately held consort and its affiliates hit 11,000 flooded and part-time employees in fivesome states.

Kentucky-based river Sussex Corp., the hotel house supported by Tropicana someone William J. Yung III, shares administrative and playing functions with the Tropicana affiliates but is not participating in the insolvency filing.