Let's get one thing clear: Smoking is a noxious habit that's likely to kill you and certain to alienate other people, in my opinion. (I had two grandparents who smoked until the air turned blue, then smoked some more, which may explain my antipathy to the, uh, pastime.)

But ... not smoking appears to be bad for the health of casinos, at least in Illinois. April's numbers are out and they're down over 19% -- far more than can be plausibly blamed on the recession. For instance:

The biggest loser: It's Penn National's Alton Belle, off by 27%, with an $8 million gross. The rest of the results, as reported by Bear Stearns are as follows (with gross gaming $, when available) ...

Harrah's Joliet: -18% ($26.4 million)

Grand Victoria [MGM Mirage]: -18%

Hollywood Casino [Penn National]: -20%

Empress Joliet [" "]: -26% 

Casino Queen: -5.3%

Harrah's Metropolis: -25.5% ($9.8 million)

Pair-A-Dice [Boyd Gaming]: -16% ($9.7 million)

Illinois' smoking ban went into effect Jan.1 and things clearly haven't been the same since.

This Just In ... Sheldon Adelson is stubborn. Who knew?

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]

Tropicana Entertainment Co-President Scott Butera has really been working the phones -- a salutary, welcome change from the truculence and stonewalling reporters came to expect from Columbia Sussex.

(Apparently Las Vegas Tropicana execs were among those left in the dark about the impending bankruptcy, even though the company was clearly ramping up for it well in advance. With a forbearance, a court date and a labor negotiation all impending between May 5-15, the timing of the Chapter 11 announcement looks less and less coincidental by the day.)

Butera tells GlobeSt,com, the company was caught in fiscal triple-pincer movement consisting of an economic downturn that curtail traveling and gambling (i.e., "an unprecedented drop in the debtors' revenue"), a plummeting real estate market (i.e., a dwindling asset base), and "dislocated" credit markets (i.e., nowhere from which to borrow more), all of which effectively increased the company's already high leverage.

But when he says that the higher leverage was responsible for the workforce reductions in Atlantic City (over 900 employees), that's just B.S. -- to put it very kindly. As documented by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, a central point of CEO William J. Yung III's "road show" presentation to sell bonds that would finance his Aztar Corp. takeover was the elimination of $35 million or more in salaries (a plan carefully concealed from New Jersey regulators). He also didn't waste any time bringing out the chainsaw in Las Vegas, either -- long before any downturn in the leisure sector was evident.

Butera was also wrong when he said Columbia Sussex was forced to sell its Indiana riverboat. It could have fought the (probable) loss of its license. But if that course of action was contemplated, it wasn't for long, as Yung pledged to sell Casino Aztar to pay down debt immediately after his New Jersey license was yanked.

And, if you're a fan of irony, you'd have to enjoy Butera's description of the NJCCC as "arbitrary and capricious" -- the exact same words the NJCCC used to describe the decision-making process at Columbia Sussex. Coincidence? I think not.

According to GlobeSt.com's Brian K. Miller, the Atlantic City Trop sale can't close escrow until Columbia Sussex's appeal runs its course. The latter's case may have merit (especially if employs some of the arguments UNLV's David Schwartz has propounded in the pages of the Las Vegas Business Press and his DieIsCast.com blog -- now sporting a new design).

But if "Attila the Yung" wins, God help the poor Trop employees -- and customers. Yung: The Sequel could give new meaning to "back with a vengeance."

The bottom line of Butera's ongoing saga of spin, spin, spin is that the blame for this debacle never, ever rests with Columbia Sussex or Bill Yung. It's always those Family Circus poltergeists "Ida Know" and "Not Me" who are culpable.

Unimpressed with Butera's analysis is Tom Weston, who argues that the Trop co-president's analysis is pretty much ass-backwards. Money quote: "But the truth is that Columbia-Sussex operating policies, including massive layoffs and declining standards, caused problems throughout the casino empire long before the New Jersey license was revoked."

Boardwalk Bargain: Is the bidding process for the Atlantic City Trop still open? Trustee Gary Stein implies as much -- or that the two or three known bidders are haggling, seeing a chance to snap up a distressed asset from a bankrupt company at a fire-sale price. Stein's remark that he's ready to re-start talks with "interested parties" strongly suggests that he's lost patience with Cordish Cos., the New York mystery bidders and maybe Colony Capital. Anybody want a little (OK, huge) fixer-upper on the Boardwalk?

An anonymous reader of the Las Vegas Sun (who appears to be an employee of either the Tropicana Express or River Palms, in Laughlin, alleges (see "Discussion") that management has raised the possibility of cutting employees back to 32 hour weeks, potentially triggering the loss of health benefits.

Then again, an R-J reader once claimed to have official, inside, black-and-white corporate knowledge that Paris-Las Vegas would be split off from Bally's and one of them would be sold. That'd be a neat trick when you consider that the two casino-hotels share a Siamese-twin sort of physical plant, which was why Hilton Gaming (remember them?) was able to build Paris-Las Vegas for considerably less than a billion dollars.

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]

They don't call the New York Times "the gray lady" for nothing. Today, she seems a little more hard of hearing and out of touch than usual. Four of the six "New Titans" pictured in this story haven't been in the casino industry for more than three years.

Mind you, there could be worse things than if Messrs. Breitling, Agassi & Rogers pooled their pennies and bought the San Remo/Hooters out of its interminable "for sale" limbo. Or maybe they could scare up the $1 billion necessary to persuade Columbia Sussex to part with the Las Vegas Tropicana. They seem like just the fellows to bring class back to that much-abused dowager.

Tim Poster, though, they should probably leave at home. As depicted in Breitling's Double or Nothing, Poster comes off as temperamentally ill-suited to running a casino. After all, if you raise the limits on high-end play, you've got to lie in the bed you've made, not have a meltdown and get resentful toward the player(s) who took you to the cleaners.

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]

Too much blogohrrea and too little hydration have left me spent, drained, kaput-ski. (Mind you, some would say I've been running on empty for a long time.) And when our cranky blogging software devoured another hour's worth of work -- this one about Las Vegas Sands' emergency "stop-loss" mission to Macao, it was time to stick a fork in me.

So I may take it easy for a couple of days -- relatively speaking. (Which is okay, because Ian Sutton has all the news that's fit to link over at GamingFloor.com.) 'Cause when I'm not blogging or writing squibs for "What's News," I'm whaling away on our big "Question of the Day" archive, categorizing and cross-categorizing. And out of all that mulching, we intend to produce a super-FAQ, a gambling/Vegas lexicon and guide that will hopefully merge some of the best features of QoD and Wikipedia.

In the meantime, let's end with even more good news: Mamma Mia! just marked its 2,000th Las Vegas performance last Sunday night. I've had the great good fortune to see it three times in three years, belatedly getting in touch with my inner ABBA fan.

That's meant seeing three Sophies, nine prospective fathers, two or three Skys (Skies?), but always the indomitable Carole Linnea Johnson and her two kick-ass sidekicks, Vicki Van Tassel and Robin Baxter. I have no idea what impact the forthcoming movie version, starring Meryl Streep, will have on the Las Vegas box office or whether MGM Mirage will give Mamma Mia! another reprieve. (It's already had one stay of execution.) But long may these Dancing Queens reign.

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]

1) Following Saturday's tragedy at the Kentucky Derby, maybe it's time to put "the sport of kings" out to pasture. After all, market forces have already appeared to have "selected out" horse racing for extinction. Just think of all the states where horse racing is subsidized by slot machines and VLTs (and contemplate the irony of the snobbiest of sports being underwritten by the most snob-averse form of commercial gambling). And if some states (think Maryland, Kentucky) don't have slots propping up the horsey set, it's not for lack of trying.

At the very least, horse breeders, trainers, tracks and racing associations should adopt en bloc the recommendations of ESPN horse racing analyst Randy Moss (no, not that Randy Moss). They include: A) ban the whip; B) change the track surfaces, as has been done overseas; and C) stop medicating horses on race day to enable them to run. The last is just plain common sense, but it seems it takes the sad fate of a Barbaro or an Eight Belles to get it through our communal noggin.

2) If pictures like these make you sick ...

... then this blog has, at long last, done some good. These poor, tortured animals are part of some sick, twisted person's "art installation." It's really interactive "snuff" porn. If you want to put a stop to this, sign here.

Now if only we could wrap our minds around the unimaginable enormity of 22,000 lives (at minimum) lost in the Burmese catastrophe ...

(I see that Laura Bush is getting a raw deal for making a few common sense remarks about the crisis. The moral? Whatever you do in politics, for Pete's sake, never speak your mind.)

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]

* -- The working title of Soylent Green.

Since if I have to type the words "Columbia Sussex" or "Tropicana" one more time today I think I may barf (especially after a blog glitch obliterated an hour's work, like President Hillary Clinton calling in a nuclear strike on Iran), any change of subject is welcome.

Among the items scheduled to be heard by the Clark County Planning Commission today -- and by the full commission next month -- is a casino-resort proposal put forward by Lifestyle Holdings LLC. It proposes to erect multiple condo-hotel towers on this 9.4-acre site, embraced by the Desert Inn arterial, Highland Drive, and the Union Pacific railroad. (From the looks of it, vehicular access won't exactly be a snap.) At least the land was a relative bargain, at $1.1 million/acre.

Public-records searches turn up a thicket of foreign and domestic LLCs, but all roads eventually lead to Miami-based WSG Development Co., which boasts an impressive portfolio of condo and shopping mall projects. I can't find a page for it at VegasTodayAndTomorrow.com, which should tell you how far this project has flown under the radar. If Mark Adams hasn't heard of it, then it's a stealthy project indeed. "Lifestyle," as the project is called, would occupy the brown patch marked "Proposed Resort" behind Trump Towers on his master map.

The nitty-gritty is that Lifestyle proposes to build three towers (two of them 620 feet tall, the third 474 feet). Floors 46-50 of the two principal towers would consist of 98 condo units, and both towers would be connected by a bridge at the 44th/45th-floor levels. There would be 2,650 hotel rooms, 75,000 feet of casino space and a like amount of meeting rooms.

Entry to the property would be from Highland Drive and Desert Inn Road (not from the arterial). Given the small footprint of land, it's no surprise that the towers would be smack-dab against (read: 21 feet back) the surrounding streets. Since WSG has no casino experience to date, its a reasonable surmise that casino operations would be farmed out, at least on the interim basis that we saw at the Hard Rock Hotel.

The catch? Clark County's planning staff has given Lifestyle the thumbs-down. Their reasons include the big-ass variances Lifestyle would require including a 520% increase in the allowable building height and a rezoning of the property to place it within the nearest Gaming Enterprise District. Or, to put it another way, the GED would sprout a "thumb," jutting out into the middle of a low-rise business district.

The fact that Lifestyle would be an isolated development in a light-industrial district, cut off from direct access to the Strip, also factors into the recommendation. Among the requests made of WSG Development, should the project get approved anyway, is the creation of a pedestrian bridge across the railway.

After all, if you're staying at Trump Tower (no casino there), wouldn't your logical course of action be to wander out the back door, maybe stop off at the Love Boutique on charming Industrial Road and then cross the train tracks to gamble at Lifestyle?

Other non-governmental, but quite practical considerations are the convoluted route one would have to take to reach Lifestyle. And with the Desert Inn overpass to the north and the Union Pacific snug up against Lifestyle's eastern flank, the noise-abatement problems could be Herculean.

Still, you have to give WSG Development an "A" for ingenuity. Unless somebody feels like parting with 10 acres of Strip land at a steeply discounted price, out of the goodness of their hearts, WSG has at least brainstormed a low-cost way to try and get into the game. Who knows? With bits and pieces of land just to the southwest being snapped up for possible hotel development, WSG might even be ahead of the curve -- should Clark County come around to the idea of a "Strip West."

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]

Part of the ongoing fallout from the Tropicana Entertainment bankruptcy is an even more dire forecast for the Lake Tahoe market. How bad is it? Well, even though Columbia Sussex has an option to renew its lease on the Horizon, the property's owner, Park Cattle Co., says it intends to take possession of the property when the lease is up (in three years) and "expects to convert the Horizon into something other than a casino when the property changes hands."

I guess you know things are bad when casino gambling ceases to be the highest and best use of a Nevada resort hotel. And you have to love the quote from the hospitality consultant who says Tropicana's Chapter 11 filing won't hurt the Horizon and sister property MontBleu so long as they don't "have to start cutting corners."

Man, you're talking about Columbia Sussex! It's what they do! (Bill Yung used to brag about it.)

Rounding up the rest of the Columbia Sussex reportage for the day, the admirably optimistic Scott Butera says his company is entering bankruptcy "from a position of financial and operational strength." Minus the Atlantic City Tropicana, Casino Aztar (sold) and Horizon Vicksburg (sold), and with Horizon Lake Tahoe now on borrowed time? And with Trop bonds trading at half their face value?

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal story can now be presented in its entirety. (Plus some analyst bloggery on the subject.) The WSJ calls Columbia Sussex owner of "a small casino kingdom." Fair enough, although some of us think of it more as a relatively minor principality whose castles are crumbling.

And did Butera really say Tropicana Entertainment wasn't planning to sell any of its 11 casinos, or did the WSJ reporters simply misconstrue his words? I mean, he did get the memo about Casino Aztar and Horizon Vicksburg having been sold, yes? (Both transactions are in the regulatory-approval and closing processes.) Elsewhere, he implies that Tropicana Entertainment may be out of Chapter 11 by year's end.

Here in Las Vegas, the Culinary Union may have reason for anxiety, but Casino Aztar's workforce has been assured that pay and benefits will continue as before. If all goes according to plan, Evansville employees should be out from under Tropicana cloud in a month or so, when Eldorado Resorts' application for ownership is expected to go through.

The endgame? By pumping up the volume of anti-New Jersey Casino Control Commission rhetoric, blaming it for Columbia Sussex's fiscal predicament and asking the NJCCC to hold off selling the Atlantic City Tropicana until market conditions improve, one possibility suggests itself.

Perhaps this is too Machiavellian by half, but is Yung and Butera's goal to wrest the A.C. Trop away from the State of New Jersey via the courts (thereby reconnecting Tropicana Entertainment to its primary lifeline) or at least keep it ensnarled in liitgation to kingdom come? Maybe even extract a nine- or 10-figure settlement from the state, thereby erasing much of their debt?

Yes, this is a crummy time to be selling a casino in Atlantic City. Even the Bader Field fever has abated, for the nonce. And yes, the longer Butera and Yung can get the NJCCC to draw out the sale process, the better their chances of getting the forfeiture of the A.C. Trop before a court.

But the NJCCC isn't in the business of running casinos and it has an obligation to the taxpayers to unload it (and the attendant costs of trusteeship) sooner rather than later. Not to mention that union talks are in abeyance as long as the Trop's status remains in limbo. As for getting the highest value for the property, how long would the NJCCC have to wait for market conditions to return to the fevered climate of 2006?

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]

Cher: "[a] well-preserved diva-saur." -- The New York Post

(Props to Jessica Roe for spotting this gem.)

MGM Mirage 2.0? Two separate companies, one in hotels and one in gaming? Makes sense, especially with so much non-casino expansion into Dubai and China. Besides, it might afford a graceful way around the potentially awkward problem of obtaining gaming licenses for Dubai World. After all, that Pansy Ho probe was still dragging along in New Jersey, last I heard. Had MGM Mirage been bifurcated earlier, perhaps Pansy could have been nominally responsible for the Macao hotel operations while MGM Mirage was titular owner of the casino.

It's an idea that merits further discussion. (Steve Friess got there first and has a just slightly different take.)

Keeping up with Friess. He's been way ahead of me on the unfolding Tropicana collapse. Interesting how the Columbia Sussex company line to Friess was "pure speculation" (i.e., a non-denial denial), even though Tropicana Entertainment had already confirmed it to The Associated Press. Sounds like another case of the ColSux left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

Friess has the official filing, too, and he's less than impressed with the new management team, seeing as their last gig was The Cosmopolitan, not a project renowned for its robust financial health.

Note that MGM Mirage's Alan Feldman tells Friess that acquiring The Trop is something "we have not considered," as though to say it's beneath MGM's notice. To say it's unlikely is one thing; to it's not even been thought about, quite another. (It would give MGM complete control of the "new" Four Corners at Tropicana Avenue and The Strip, though.)

Back during the Aztar bidding war, Feldman had been openly disappointed that Dan Lee and Pinnacle Entertainment didn't emerge victorious (see penultimate paragraph). Perhaps MGM would like to see a classy property on that corner -- just so long as somebody else goes to the trouble of buying and building it. After all, it's not like they don't have an iron or two in the fire already.

[Add Comment] [Email Blogger]