David Mckee's Stiffs & Georges - Architecture

Trop, Sands purges continue

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:36:00 -0700

It's official: "Pit Bull of Comedy" Bobby Slayton has snarled his last at the Tropicana Las Vegas. Thus endeth a brief, inauspicious reign by Anthony Cools over the Trop's upstairs showroom. A well-placed source advises LVA that Beatles tribute show Penny Lane was pulled after EMI hit it with a cease-and-desist letter. In any event, it left as invisibly as it arrived.

Trop CEO Alex Yemenidjian still has three shows he inherited from predecessor Scott Butera but it's pretty clear that he's going to put his own stamp on the property. As for Cools, well, he'll always have O'Shea's.

Movement at Cosmo. Buried in the Review-Journal (six items deep) is the news that the Cosmopolitan has wooed ~~John~~ Marshall Andrew away from Las Vegas Sands to be its CFO and hired Station Casinos refugee Marshall Andrew as chief information officer. Deutsche Bank looks serious about making that September '10 opening date.

Will the economy have improved sufficiently to have absorbed most of the CityCenter rooms and the Planet Hollywood Westgate ones by then (and maybe, but not very likely, Fontainebleau)? Boyd Gaming is betting otherwise. The Echelon cranes have been seen coming down, marking an additional hiatus in the project, which reportedly will not be resumed until 2012.

Las Vegas Sands: Execs overboard!

Andrew is just the latest exec lured -- or chased -- away from Sheldon Adelson's employ. Former Venetian veep Paul Pusateri (who helped launch Paris-Las Vegas back in the day) was just nominated as president at The Palms and ever-helpful Sands spokeswoman Mindy Eras has gone to Preferred Public Relations. Whether these moves are part of Adelson's promised cost reductions or are a winnowing out of perceived William Weidner loyalists, it must be getting lonely at the top.

There's quite a debate going on at the Las Vegas Sun on the rise and fall of themed resorts on the Strip. Surf over, check it out, maybe weigh in, if the spirit moves you.

Quote of the Day

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:24:00 -0700

"Too cool for Vegas." -- a friend's description of Frank Gehry's design for the Lou Ruvo Center for the study of Alzheimer's disease.

Optimism in Macao, euphoria at CityCenter

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:33:00 -0700

Relaxation of stringent visa restrictions from Guangdong Province came a full four months sooner than expected, starting Sept. 1. Now, residents will be able to visit Macao once a month instead of quarterly. While this has prompted J.P. Morgan to raise its price target on Las Vegas Sands stock, analysts also fret that Sands may overreact and go pedal to the metal on its unfinished Cotai Strip™ hotels.

Those same analysts are bullish on the manufacturing sector, though. They think casinos will be more willing to reinvest in the slot base as 2009 draws to a close. Also, the onward march of casino expansion means more jurisdictions and facilities to whom IGT, Bally and WMS can peddle their products. They're 'meh' on regional casino operators like Penn National, Ameristar Casinos and Pinnacle Entertainment, due to flattish performance. (Penn could catch a break in Kansas, though I still think Cordish Gaming has that sewn up.)

But that's a rave notice compared to the long face Morgan analysts pull when pondering Boyd Gaming's prospects. They cite the slow-to-recover, promo-driven locals-casino market in Las Vegas ("trickle-down" economics of the worst sort); Atlantic City's critical condition -- "the best-case scenario here is that [Borgata] would do less bad" than most of A.C. -- those blah regional metrics and new competition for the Blue Chip riverboat in Indiana, which had been looking like 2009's feel-good story.

Intriguingly, the prospect of a Strip acquistion is floated in lieu of a 'stalking horse' bid for floundering Station Casinos. Boyd's still got enough unused borrowing capacity it could even swing an acquisition of The Mirage (with money to spare), not to mention some of the lower-hanging fruit, which now includes Planet Hollywood. But if the J.P. Morgan guys are gun-shy concerning Boyd ...

They're over the moon about MGM Mirage's CityCenter: "we are increasingly under the belief that City Center will be a new must-see property for both domestic and international gamers/travelers that should drive solid visitation volumes to the Strip in 2010. We were impressed with the massive 18m-square-foot complex ... a new type of high-end product for the Strip that should garner increased trips. It has a very contemporary feel that is different than anything else on the Strip, with lots of natural light and high ceilings, interesting room product and, for a massive property, ease of getting around from one 'neighborhood' to the next."

More good news comes in the form of a press release from Commerce Casino (in Commerce, Calif.), which rolled out the welcome mat for a group of undoubtedly weary firefighters. A strike force of 30 Bay Area-based firemen is being housed in the casino's hotel, with the casino comping all meals and picking up most of the hotel tab. Let's hope that such civic-mindedness spreads through the industry like -- if you'll forgive the analogy -- wildfire.

In case it matters, "super-starlet" (yes, that's the official term) Holly Madison has been given a 12-month contract extension at Peepshow, so she's obviously earning her pay. Also, I've heard through the grapevine that she and incoming Aubrey O'Day do not get along, so the timing of the Madison announcement should make clear who's got the upper implant in this situation.

Kitty rescue at Caesars; Stingy Station

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:43:00 -0700

As we were driving to LVA HQ this morning, we spotted a disoriented-looking little cat running through the Flamingo Rd./I-15 interchange, across from Caesars Palace. We were in a quandary about what to do until it turned and started ambling down the I-15 "on" ramp, heading straight for certain death. I ran down the ramp after it (the kitty's a fast little bugger), scooped it up in one hand and ...

Well, what to do? I am now the custodian of a small, tuxedo-patterned kitten who may be carrying God knows what infections. It's too docile to be a feral cat but it's definitely going to need a new residence. So if anybody reading this can lend a helping hand to a homeless kitty, contact me at dmckee@huntingtonpress.com. I could just plop the wee bairn out in the LVA parking lot, along with our resident strays, but they're all massive and it would be a very Darwinian situation, I fear.

Cheesparing at Station: The formidable Jean Scott has news of some recent and untoward developments at Station Casinos, as the bankrupt company resorts to new "economy" measures. While the Fertitta clan sinks approximately $90 million into Orange County mansions, they're recouping the cost of their poor business decisions out of their customers' hides.

Random observations: Last night, we celebrated my Better Half's birthday, partly at Cadillac Ranch, which seems to have an identity crisis. Its menu is slightly countrified (in a C&W sense), its walls are covered with photos of Baby Boomer rock stars (think Steven Tyler) and the video feed is heavy on hip-hop. Go figure. The root beer float is very good, though. At 10:30, as though by prearranged signal, an incoming tide of douchebags flooded the joint and we split ...

... the classy southern façade of Mandarin Oriental has now been marred by a building wrap, high up on one corner. It's small by building-wrap standards, managing to both spoil the view and look like a timid half-measure ...

... speaking of building wraps, Criss F. Angel has long since been evicted from the eastern façade of Luxor. A new wrap was placed on the northeast corner of Luxor's ancillary hotel, but it's also smallish and -- due to way the hotel's buttresses jut forward -- hard to see if you're driving into Vegas from the south. Then again, if I were MGM Mirage, I'd probably want to downplay with association with the widely ridiculed Mr. Angel, too.

Boyd, Ameristar stable; CityCenter schedule revised

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:10:00 -0700

Second-quarter results from Boyd Gaming and Ameristar Casinos gave continued reason to be sanguine about each company. Both reported profits (12 cents per share at Boyd, double that at Ameristar) and both missed their revenue targets by an aggregate of only $8 million. A whopping (27%) jump in Colorado revenues for Ameristar last month was additional reason for confidence, offsetting weakness in Kansas City.

Cost control was credited with helping Boyd's performance, as was much-better-than-expected cash flow at Borgata. The Las Vegas locals market also ran ahead of expectations in that regard, while downtown and the Midwest/South casinos lagged. Bankruptcy filing or no, Boyd maintains that it continues to be a suitor for Station Casinos. Oh, and keeping Echelon mothballed -- while the least expensive of alternatives -- isn't cheap, costing Boyd $3 million a month.

MGM Mirage has sent LVA a revised, official list of dates for the debut of the various bits and pieces of CityCenter. (Excepted, of course, is the Harmon[ini] which, as of last Wednesday, had no firmer opening date than "late 2010.") The openings are as follows:

Vdara (Dec. 1); Crystals (Dec. 3); Mandarin Oriental (Dec. 4); Aria (Dec. 16), while condo closings in Veer Towers are set to "begin in January." When MGM gave a CityCenter dog-and-pony show to the Nevada Hospitality & Lodging Association last week, the computer graphics still showed Baldwin's Bump at its original, 48-story height. Also, the bluish tint that denoted CityCenter's acreage, by quirk or design, extended to embrace the Cosmopolitan. A portent?

Case Bets: Hard Rock, Puck, Station, Greek Isles

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:55:00 -0700

Morgans Hotel Group has never seemed able to make up its mind about what to do with the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino (one of the stranger acquisitions of recent years). Then-CEO Ed Scheetz came in talking big about classing the place up and raising ADRs. Fast-forward to '09 and the HRH is staking everything on its skanky Rehab parties (does the staff have to don hazmat suits when cleaning up afterwards?) and going for the mid-price market midweek.

One can't fault the latter half of that strategy, especially if you're in an off-Strip location and could use the traffic. However, if Morgans goal was to increase Hard Rock ADRs, perhaps it shouldn't have embarked on a ginormous expansion that practically obliterates Peter Morton's original hotel and dilutes the asking price per room. Also, I don't know whether to praise Morgans for doing the impossible and completing (sort of) its Paradise Tower well ahead of schedule ... or criticize it for being in such a hurry to churn some EBITDA that it's opening it in an unfinished state.

But here's hoping the business model works. The HRH is one of the few places in town that's hiring, not downsizing. At lot of people's jobs are riding on its success.

One less Wolfgang Puck restaurant on the Strip? That's hardly a culinary tragedy, given that he's still got -- what? -- five other places in town and has become the Ronald McDonald of haute cuisine. A laughable poster in McCarran International Airport uses Puck's visage to push the message, "Less celebrity, more chef." Uh, better put that the other way 'round.

The real tragedy here (aside from the loss of jobs) is the temporary demise of Poetry, one of the few venues in town to cater to an upscale African-American clientele. Harrah's Entertainment and the Forum Shops went out of their way to put the dagger in Poetry. Now they congratulate themselves on a job well done. Thanks for nothing, fellas.

Bondholders finally lost patience with Station Casinos, tripping the bankruptcy lever. Interestingly, all Station casinos (small "c") are shielded -- which implies that it's Station's imperial expansion plans which are are shot and that its considerable real estate holdings could be up for grabs. It looks like über-resort Viva, long-suffering Durango Station, Losee Station and umpteen other projects are kaput.

Too bad for Station partner Colony Capital; if the latter goes forward with its Neverland Ranch tourist-trap plans, it may have to disassemble the old Michael Jackson Xanadu and relocate it, lock, stock and menagerie. And what does/did Station have in abundance? Raw land. It was a marriage made in businss heaven but it surely won't reach the altar now.

Speaking of suffering, what's back on the auction block but the Greek Isles, which is $23 million underwater. Even at a revised valuation of $44 million, isn't that far too much to ask for this unremittingly unsuccessful property, the second coming of the Castaways? Perhaps it's time to exorcise this ghost which haunts the dead zone that is Convention Center Drive.

God, save the Queen!

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:00 -0700

Another victim of the Comment-Eating Server, Jeff in OKC, writes:

Isn't the Queen of Hearts property part of what is to become the new City Hall? I know the Nevada Hotel and Casino isn't pretty, but it is the first casino built by Sam Boyd as owner, I think I read, and was owned for many years by Downtown icon Jackie Gaughan. That would be enough to give it preservable cachet in most cities.

IMO, Tamares has been a bad landowner in Las Vegas, having done nothing to enhance their properties, and barely doing any maintenance. I recall reading that they let the unrestricted gaming license on the Nevada lapse. I think the City should pressure them to sell out (The Stevens family's Desert Rock holdings that owns half the Golden Gate could tie the Nevada Hotel tastefully into a complex with the Golden Gate) to others who have a desire to invest in the City. The Siegels have done a miraculous transformation of the Gold Spike, showing that it is possible to do business in the City of Las Vegas.

The Plaza [Hotel] and Las Vegas Club are two properties that have beautiful 1970's and 1980's charm, which are rapidly disappearing in Las Vegas. Their time in the sun is coming, and a fiscally responsible touch up would be in the best interest of the operators and the City. I wish the Mayor was as interested in appropriately keeping what is 30 years old as much as instilling his vision of 30 years into the future.

Tamares' crown jewels

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:45:00 -0700

Ian Sutton posted this today at GamingFloor.com and I couldn't resist snurching it. Sandwiched between footage of the Lady Luck and other Downtown detritus is a long, loving look at those two fine Tamares Group dereli ... er, acquisitions: the Queen of Hearts and the Hotel Nevada. The latter has long been closed as was (supposedly) the QoH. But I saw some lights on at the old Queen when we drove past it Tuesday night, so who knows?

The bigger question is why Tamares continues to let these eyesores fester, especially with nearby development on Oscar Goodman's famous 61 acres proceeding apace. It's past time to knock this crap down. Even empty land would be an improvement. Ditto the Lady Luck. For a three-syllable solution to that gargantuan hulk, I defer to the time-honored wisdom of Jimmie J.J. Walker:

"Link" to Nowhere

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:49:00 -0700

On and off, over a four-year period, Harrah's Entertainment teased journalists (and, by extension, the public) with hints of a really big project to be announced really soon ... whenever they got around to it, that is. Well, the Harrah's mountain hath labored and produced ... a mouse.

"Project Link" isn't without virtues, even if they're largely negative ones. It isn't another high-end, multi-billion-dollar megaresort. It's not a budget-buster, period. It's not über-expensive food and retail. And it does entail giving modest facelifts to a couple of Harrah's tattier Strip properties: O'Shea's would lose its faux-Dublin façade and the Imperial Palace's Strip frontage (and pagoda roof) would be supplanted with what appear to be enormous LED screens.

It also acknowledges what's long been one of the problems of Harrah's consolidation of the east side of the Strip into one ginormous province. Namely, that to redevelop it in any significant way would involve taking one or more of a string of multi-story cash registers out of business. True, you could start from the back, maybe knock down the IP first, but at some point push comes to shove and a major cash-flow-producing Strip casino (most likely Harrah's Las Vegas) would have to give way. In a sense, the real estate was already too lucrative to be redeveloped.

Arrival at this plan involved acknowledging certain factors that should have been obvious long before CEO Gary Loveman went on a buying spree. For instance, that MGM Mirage/Wynn Resorts-scale megaresorts are a low-ROI proposition. Or that such a creation might impinge on business at ever-growing Caesars Palace. (It never ceases to amaze me that Harrah's spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to determine what, say, Hunter Hillegas could tell them for free.)

Of course, any new resort built in Lovemanville wouldn't have to be high-end/low-return. That's just the industry group-think of our day; that you "justify" the land's cost by superimposing a hella expensive megaresort atop it, then justify that outlay by charging prices that relatively few can afford.

The notion of luring pedestrians off the Strip and down a multi-dogleg side street is an untested notion. Give Harrah's points for thinking outside the box here. It'll mean getting Vegas visitors to break ingrained habits but it could eventually stimulate further off-Strip development.

For all I know, it could be Gary Loveman's longstanding fantasy to own a 600-foot Ferris wheel with an (at least) 200-foot "HARRAH'S" logo lighting up the night sky. But do I believe this is what he had in mind when he supervised the purchase of vast tracts of Koval Lane real estate at top dollar? Not for a moment. Especially not when you consider he's been sweeping it clean of low-rise housing developments that might otherwise have been of income-producing use.

Now, like Gershwin's Porgy, he's got plenty of nuhtin' and nuthin's plenty for him. His projected Ferris wheel will be sitting (as you can see from the rendering) smack in the middle of a wasteland, a void, a whole lotta nowhere. At least the circus can pitch its tents there the next time it comes to town.

It's harder still to believe that this (mini-)master plan was concocted two years ago and kept under wraps until now ... unless it was a before-the-fact, low-budget, "Well, we've got to do something" concession to the development-crippling effect of the LBO. Even so, secrets just aren't that well kept in this town.

Then again, it often seems if Loveman himself does not know what Loveman has in mind. Take for instance, his recent contention that building a Strip megaresort was too big a risk for Harrah's. Not compared to taking on $24 billion in LBO debt it wasn't. And you could build a megaresort and a half for the $5 billion in company value Loveman recently wrote off.

The biggest threat to Project Link may be Loveman -- or rather his short-attention-span style of leadership. While some cunning master plan may be apparent to his inner circle, the leitmotif of Loveman's tenure as CEO has been to jitterbug spastically from one short-lived initiative to another.

Having gotten right up to the threshhold of having to decide what to do with Lovemanville, his trigger finger grew weak. He pulled a U-turn and flung Harrah's into the arms of Texas Pacific Group and Apollo Management, a move with disastrous consequences. (Especially for the consumer, as TPG/Apollo's plan was to gut the company all along.) At least it had the short-term benefit of sparing beloved local institution Battista's Hole in the Wall from Loveman's bulldozers. As with his jihad against revenue-participation games like Wheel of Fortune, Loveman often seems oblivious or (far more likely) indifferent to what customers like or want.

In the two years or so it will require for Project Link to obtain startup capital, the odds are considerably better than 50-50 that Loveman will have lost interest and moved on to something else. If he doesn't, it would be a very pleasant surprise.

Case Bets: M Resort, bad debt, Wall Street's bomb

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 14:26:00 -0700

After fairly flying out of the gate, M Resort has hit the wall. Unfortunately, CEO Anthony Marnell III's response to economic adversity has been to sweat the value propositions. Not only is M fretting about card counters (hands down, the silliest preoccupation in the casino industry), it's yanking full-pay video poker machines.

“We are in business to have an edge and these games are nearly break-even,” Marnell tells Liz Benston. Give him points for candor ... but if you didn't want players to have a 50-50 shot, you should never have installed the machines in the first place, fella. This reeks of bait-and-switch. The video poker community is tightly knit; word of this stuff gets arounds fast and will undoubtedly redound to Marnell's disadvantage.

Another thing that might be working against Marnell are M's distinctly underwhelming coupon offers -- far inferior to those from Station Casinos, for one. The Significant Other and I tend to forward our M "offers" straight into the WPB (waste paper basket). I'd also respectfully dissent with Benston re M's casino design: It's a throwback to the old "disorientation" days. For ease of navigation, M's not a patch on Eastside Cannery, to say nothing of Wynn Las Vegas. Heck, even the venerable Sahara isn't the rat maze that is M's gambling floor.

When "whales" attack. Indicted high roller Terrance K. Watanabe is taking on Nevada's casino-debt-collection machine and his lawyer is making some interesting legal arguments. Basically, he's contending that markers are loans, not checks (as longstanding Nevada precedent would have it). Should this argument prevail at trial, it could have far-reaching consequences.

Since markers could no longer be booked as income, Nevada would no longer be able to tax uncollected markers, as it currently does. Since enforcement of the debt is funded by assessing a 10% penalty on the debtor, Clark County couldn't afford to go after delinquent whales, either. And casinos themselves might have to think even harder before (in effect) lending money to players like Watanabe who, his attorney says, accounted for a fifth of The Rio's and Caesars Palace's casino revenue in a two-year period.

Hoist on its petard. In his latest Las Vegas Business Press column, Dr. David G. Schwartz explains how the consolidation mania of the 1990s (spurred by manic Wall Street analysts) came back to bite the casino industry in its ass when times were tough. So tell us, Nevada Gaming Commission, why was it such a good idea to have an oligopoly on the Strip (and in Lake Tahoe ... and ... )?

Wynn goes to Monaco

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:20:00 -0700

Maybe this just goes in the "pipe dream" category, but a Culver City architectural firm has posted renderings that indicate Steve Wynn is/was thinking of extending his brand to Monaco. A description is said to be "coming soon." In the meantime, enjoy the view(s):

Will we be seeing Wynn's new "Old World" style in Las Vegas when he re-redevelops the Desert Inn golf course? The site also has renderings of a "Wynn Singapore" that looks like a Marina Bay-site pitch that was abandoned somewhere in the design process.

You can also see how the Bahamar project might have been, at least before Harrah's Entertainment walked away from the table. Very Bellagio-esque, don't you think? (Thanks to VegasTripping.com and Two Way Hard Three for putting myself and others onto the trail of these images.)

Moulin Rouge: Whoops!

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:27:00 -0700

The Moulin Rouge development that will never be.

Oh dear, oh dear. Seems like the City of Las Vegas unwittingly obstructed its own arson probe into the demise of the Moulin Rouge when it allowed the property to be immediately demolished. Sloppily, the actual tearing-down was farmed out to the property's former owners, who happened to have a demolition contractor on site during the blaze.

The fire's cause remains speculative and no finding of arson has been made -- and now perhaps never will. But the city's decision not only looks overhasty, it was (at the very least) cavalier to entrust it to dispossessed Moulin Rouge Development Corp. and not new owner Olympic Coast Development. The latter's prexy, John Hoss, told the Las Vegas Sun he found the chain of events "a little odd" and "a weird coincidence." Since Hoss is only trying to corral a $100,000 insurance claim, the city could get stuck with an asbestos-removal tab as high as $1.1 million.

Can they screw this up any further? Is the Pope Catholic?

F'bleau-minus. The bankrupt resort's developer, Jeffrey Soffer, proposes some unspecified corner-cutting to get the project back on budget. ("On budget" being a very relative term where Fontainebleau is concerned.) Combine this with the allegedly secret "Enhanced" costs for F'bleau's highly touted amenities and the moral of the story is that what you see on the Web site or in the design renderings has a tenuous relationship to what you'll actually get.

At least Soffer is offering to chip in some equity, unlike former investor James Packer, who scuttled away from F'bleau the moment the chips were down.

Gator on the loose. One of Las Vegas' larger parks got a lot more interesting yesterday when a 42-inch-long alligator turned up. Instead of entrusting the spunky fellow to a local zoo or perhaps one of our local casino-based wildlife habitats, the Wildlife Dept. killed him. Bastards. I hope they never get their mitts on our beloved Mojo ...

Mojo, the monarch of Huntington Press.

Speaking of James Packer ... griefs are arriving in battalions (thanks, Mr. Shakespeare) for City of Dreams. In terms of mass-market business, Venetian Macao is eating City of Dreams' lunch. "Despite 41,000 people walking through City of Dreams every day since it opened in the first week of June, most of the visitors were just admiring the decor instead of sitting down at its tables for a game of baccarat," reports The Age.

Not only is one analyst projecting a 15% earnings shortfall for Melco Crown Entertainment, another has tripled his loss-per-share projection. J.P. Morgan is also revising its 2010 cash-flow projections on the $2.1 billion megaresort to 13% ROI, down from 17%. (That's still a better return on investment than you can get on the Las Vegas Strip.)

Did Steve Wynn take Packer to the cleaners when sold him 37% of a casino concession for $1 billion? Wynn had a chance to size up Packer and deemed him not yet ready for the big leagues. Score another one for El Steve.

Case Bets: CityCenter, W, Bernie Goldstein, Roger Thomas

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:15:00 -0700

Some rueful condo buyers are probably calling MGM Mirage's ultra-mega-super-duper resort "ShittyCenter," judging by their ire. It's difficult to know with whom to sympathize in this ongoing dispute. Condo depositors want to renegotiate prices (which range all the way up to $9.4 million/unit) while MGM -- though not unsympathetic -- maintains buyers got a special deal going in and therefore have relatively little cause for complaint.

Good luck trying to renegotiate the price of that Saturn on which you just made a downpayment. MGM needs those condo purchases if CityCenter is to remain in balance (look what happened to Fontainebleau, which has sold nary a timeshare). And it really can't afford to start refunding some of that $313 million that depositors have already placed in the kitty.

However ... there might be a pragmatic argument to be made for MGM bending to pressure. Condo sales in the valley haven't been robust -- a mere 1,172 units in 2007-08 and a measly 52 closings this year. Scarier still, the Wall Street Journal notes that 7,000 more luxury condo units are under construction as we speak.

There's basically no market remaining for high-end condos and every unit that goes on sale dilutes the value of a CityCenter aerie just a little bit more. MGM hasn't been ashamed to offer discounts to players and vacationers. Maybe it's time to extend that philosophy to condo buyers. If CEO Jim Murren has to sell a few casinos to make up the difference ... well, so be it.

Not everybody is having a hard time moving property in this market. J.P. Morgan reports that Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide just sold its W San Francisco for 14X cash flow. Geez, try to get half that multiple for a Strip property and watch potential buyers yawn in your face.

Bernie Goldstein, R.I.P. Not only are there second acts in American lives, the late Mr. Goldstein proved there are third acts as well. The granddaddy of Midwestern riverboat gambling, Goldstein built Isle of Capri Casinos into the first company of its ilk with a recognizable brand identity and saw it outlive several of its rivals. If the company's business plan went astray in recent years, that doesn't diminish the scope of Goldstein's achievement. Thankfully, the gallus-snapping Goldstein was inducted into the American Gaming Association's Hall of Fame just in the nick of time.

Congratulations to Roger Thomas for being named the next recipient of the Jay Sarno Award from Casino Design and G2E. While I'm not sure it's flattering to receive an award named after the man who covered Caesars Palace with unsightly cement mesh and gave the world Circus Circus, it's the sentiment that truly counts.

Basically, Thomas (and architect DeRuyter Butler) set the template for the last two decades on the Strip and everybody else has been tinkering around the edges. Thankfully, he's rescinded his retirement from Wynn Resorts, so we can look forward to years more of standard-setting design work.

House of wax

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:05:00 -0700

I call your bluff, comrade. As you may have heard, casinos in Russia can stay open by converting to poker rooms. A tip of the fedora goes to reader mike_ch for pointing out this story, which delineates some of the pros and cons. In Vegas, even the strongest poker rooms don't generate nearly the body count that table games and slots do. But Russian casinos are much smaller and at least a few might be able to hang on, depending on the size of the rake.

It's mighty big of the Kremlin, by the way, to concede that poker is a sport, not a game of chance. Now if only Uncle Sam would do the same ...

Rescue the Riv! Random observation from driving down Las Vegas Boulevard last night: The Riviera suddenly looks so much better and more classic when juxtaposed with the incredible bulk that is Fontainebleau. Land values have fallen, RIV stock is worthless and the property itself provides ready access to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Time, methinks, for Penn National to get off its duff and make an offer ... unless Penn CEO Peter Carlino is waiting for the Riviera to go into bankruptcy, so he can pluck the carcass at auction. Then again, if Carlino really thinks that Planet Hollywood and some or all of Station Casinos are low-hanging fruit, who am I to second-guess him?

Who's the dummy? The purpose of our excursion was to attend an incredibly pointless media event at Madame Tussauds at The Venetian. If there was a point, it was so that the assembled media hordes would serve as extras for yet another episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List. A waxwork of Ms. Griffin was being unveiled and suffice it to say that Wax!Griffin looks far better than Real!Griffin. (I must be Officially Jaded, for I scarcely gave the comedienne a second glance.) The various and sundry female impersonators on hand -- led by Frank Marino -- had clearly taken greater care of their appearances than Griffin had of hers. There was, in fact, just about every stripe of LGBT humanity on hand last night, so it was almost more Rainbow Coalition than media event.

What excitement there was went on outside, where a smallish crowd surrounded the Michael Jackson statue. Tributes were in evidence but everything was tasteful and no hysteria was to be seen. As for Mme. Tussauds itself, I've been to the original one in London, and I recall its wax figures as being more believable and the setting itself as more atmospheric (especially the tableaux of infamous British homicides and regicides) ... but that was 35 years ago this month.

Give Vegas Tussauds props for having a Joan Rivers dummy who looks more animated than her real-life counterpart, as seen on the NBC sitcom Celebrity Apprentice. All that's missing is to give the waxwork Rivers a voice box that periodically squawks, "A pokuh playah! A pokuh playah!" Still, we easily spent more time checking out the doodads and gizmos in Brookstone than we did in the wax museum.

Quote of the Day

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:13:00 -0700

“The opening date never moved. We always threw more money at it. You just have people work overtime to fix problems. We were building, redesigning, tearing stuff out and starting again.” -- Fontainebleau engineer, explaining how the project (which is at least 90% over budget) progressed in Keystone Kops, higgelty-piggelty fashion. Amazingly, not only is this common practice but F'bleau still isn't completely designed.

Seven essential Web sites ... and other news

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:23:00 -0700

Yes, you too can can be a gaming-industry blogger, with the help of but a few absolutely indispensable Web sites. The ones that I check Monday-Friday without fail (and, as they say on Dancing with the Stars, "in no particular order") are:

GamingFloor.com: The best aggregator of casino news from around the globe, especially since Editor Ian Sutton has an eye for the bizarre. Tons of eye-catching video, too, plus Ian's own on-the-spot reporting from far-flung venues like G2E Asia.

DieIsCast.com: Very eclectic but Dr. David G. Schwartz pounces on fascinating (and not very obvious) stories, often making droll pop-culture connections ... which frequently involve Star Trek.

TwoWayHardThree: Terrific discussions of casino architecture, intermingled with scoops that eagle-eyed moderator Hunter Hillegas snaps up -- not infrequently beating the local papers to the punch. His readers/forum contributors are some of the best-informed you'll encounter.

Las Vegas Sun: You're not going to find better gaming coverage this side of the Wall Street Journal and labor reporter Michael Mishak is one of the finest in the business. (The R-J's pathologically anti-union stance is probably to blame for its feeble coverage of workplace issues, as that paper's editorial-page psychoses leach into its news priorities.) Unlike its cross-town rival, the Sun doesn't take its marching orders from the Chamber of Commerce, either.

Press of Atlantic City: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed paper is king. Oh, and Press: Your new "reader-friendly" redesign blows donkeys. But if there's news a-brewin' on the Boardwalk, this is the first place to look. For more selective -- but in-depth-- coverage, Suzette Parmley in the Philadelphia Inquirer is tops in the region.

Vegas Happens Here: No morning is complete without a jolt of news from the indefatigable Steve Friess. His blog isn't casino-centric but he's quick to spot a breaking story or one that might fly under the radar ... and his Min-and-Bill relationship to Steve Wynn makes for tremendous ongoing fun. Lots of pictures, too.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Only because it exists (which, existentially, is open to debate). Like the elephant in your parlor, it must be acknowledged and sometimes its slave-driven reporters turn in exceptional work, despite their editors' best [sic] efforts to beat them down. (Inexcusably, last week the entire gaming staff was detailed to chronicle seemingly every hand played at the World Series of Poker.) The paper's shining achievement was Joan Whitely's exposé of dangerous corner-cutting at Harrah's Entertainment. Relative newcomer Arnold Knightly has ferreted out some laudable scoops, too. Howard Stutz, look to thy laurels!

Honorable mentions go to three sites that I can't always check on a daily basis, but which should not pass without notice ...

Pechanga.net: An exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) aggregration -- but it's a sieve which captures many tribal and regional gaming stories that would otherwise escape notice.

VegasTodayandTomorrow.com: Anybody -- and I mean anybody -- interested in the history and future of Sin City should have this site bookmarked. Mark Adams pores over the Web and any other source at his reach, presenting what bids fair to be the definitive online museum of Las Vegas' evolution. Our "Question of the Day" about the never-built Conrad was greatly aided by Adams' preexisting work. And the Coke-vs.-Pepsi map is must-see Internet.

The Movable Buffet: More showbiz- than bidness-focused. However, in a Vegas blogosphere infested with sycophants, Richard Abowitz provides a needed corrective to the local fawning over the celebutard of the moment. If you wish to following the continuing meltdown of Criss F. Angel step by step, Abowitz is your man. He even makes a colloquy with Holly Madison interesting. The chap's a miracle worker!

Farrah Fawcett, R.I.P.: One of the greatest of Seventies icons has died, at age 62. I was always more of a Cheryl Ladd fan myself, but Fawcett showed herself to be seriously "misunderestimated," especially in her Oscar-worthy turn as Robert Duvall's adulterous wife in The Apostle. Haven't seen it? Rent it! Ditto the severely underrated See You in the Morning, a still from which graces the Los Angeles Times obituary. Speaking of movies ...

Scott Walker 30 Century Man: A rock-and-roller who draws frequent comparisons to Samuel Beckett? Meet reclusive American expat Scott Walker and discover that the analogy has surprising validity. His handsome baritone is also one of the most compelling singing voices to emerge from the U.S. And speaking of singing ...

Patti LuPone's Orleans gig last weekend may just be the downpayment on a long-term deal. If so, it'd be one of the best shows in town and it fits the Orleans Showroom hand in glove. If only LuPone would drop from her set list that anthem to codependency, Oliver!'s "As Long As He Needs Me." She unloads so many mannerisms upon it that it's like Bill Sikes pummeling Nancy. Still and all, I'd take it over a second visit to American Superstars (also reviewed). Aaaaaaaaaaannndddd speaking of shows ...

I've received a critique of the Harmon Theater's new Monday-night, witching-hour potpourri, After the Show. While I'm not at liberty to quote any of it, suffice it to say that After the Show is described in such hallucinatory and pejorative terms that the bottom line is, even if you're a local resident and thus get in free, you've still paid too much. Better we should stay home and watch Jon Stewart, with a Conan O'Brien chaser.

Danny Gans: Still dead -- but not yet resting in peace. For the truly morbid, the R-J has published the 911 call made by his widow (as did the Sun). Listen if you care to; I didn't.

Macao" rises again?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:11:00 -0700

Block out the shopworn, mostly useless generalities coming from Las Vegas Sands and groove to Macao's scintillating casinos, recoil from its thick blanket of smog, and take some heart from Credit Suisse's prediction of an upturn in VIP play in the Chinese casino protectorate.

A contemporaneous Australian TV report -- which can't be embedded, alas -- was even more striking, especially in the stunning contrast between the sleek architectural beauty of Melco Crown International's new flagship, City of Dreams, and the fugliness of Sheldon Adelson's nearby monoliths. Cheers to Melco Crown for bringing a needed infusion of taste to the Cotai Strip™.

Xanadu: the prequel?

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:26:00 -0700

Martin Stern's 1975 conceptualization of a Xanadu casino-hotel, as virtually reconstructed by Dr. David G. Schwartz, struck a familiar chord with one S&G reader. They quickly detected a resemblance between Welton Becket's 1971 Disney's Contemporary Resort, built in modular fashion (hotel rooms were hoisted into place one at a time) for Disney World ...

... and the Xanadu design ...

How does it look to you? That pyramid look was certainly the "in" thing back when Stern was pitching Xanadu (which probably explains his choice of concept). Here's another example, from Cancun, the Grand Oasis:

Of course, when Las Vegas did get around to a pyramid-shaped hotel, it was such a flub (Luxor) that it's still being "fixed" to this day. Too bad we'll never know if Stern's concept would have worked because post-Luxor nobody's going to try anything remotely like it in Vegas again.

In other news: What may soon become know as Juice Train 2 continues to make headlines, thanks to Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) sudden flip-flop.

Goodman for governor ... again?

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:21:00 -0700

It's been bruited since at least 2002 and it's happening yet again: Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is mulling a gubernatorial run for the umpteenth time. "Spoiler!", cry some. I look at the uninspiring field (Montandon, Heck, Midnight Jim, Buckley, R. Reid) and ask, "What's there to spoil?"

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story: Drove the Chevy (Cobalt) to the levee but the levee was dry. How do you stretch a 75-minute tribute act into a two-hour/two-act Broadway musical? Badly, it seems.

Xanadu: It wasn't just a wretched Olivia Newton-John movie, Kubla Khan's pleasure palace or Charles Foster Kane's crib. It was also was also Martin Stern's unbuilt casino magnum opus. Dr. David G. Schwartz has revived his online museum dedicated to this project, "Paradise Misplaced." If it had been built, over 30 years ago, Xanadu would probably be one of those Strip casinos we now chuckle at, thinking it small, quaint and perhaps overdue for implosion. But it might have saved us from having to look at the oversize eyesore that is Excalibur, which looks laughably crude next to Stern's elegant designs.

Dr. Schwartz even recreates the Vegas of 1975. We've come a long way since then ... but who wouldn't want to hop into the Wayback Machine and experience the more spacious Strip that existed 34 years ago?

In between trying to wrap up Question of the Day essays on Carl Icahn, Stan Fulton, and condo sales in Las Vegas, I'm clearing the blotter of a few things that have fallen through the transom lately, such as ...

Elements: CityLife's Al Mancini didn't care for this new eatery, just off Tropicana Ave. The not-quite-missus and I ate there on opening night and had a better experience for our money. This review, intended for the most recent Las Vegas Advisor, didn't make the cut, so I offer it for your delectation:

Oscar didn't turn up for the May 13 opening but he'd definitely be in his, uh, element here, considering that the menu boasts no fewer than 253 martinis. Choosing but two was difficult but we opted for a chocolate-banana martini and the Miami Vice. If you want Strip-quality (or better) eating and drinking at off-Strip prices, you cannot go wrong with Elements. Both the martinis and the small plates inhabit the $7-$9 range, while the costliest entrée tops out at $25.

We started with the Kona beef short rib on gorgonzola polenta ($9) and it did not disappoint in either tastiness or generosity of portion. There are only two steaks on the menu but both were outstanding, though the black angus flank steak ($21) is quite a bit spicier than even the peppercorn-garnished black angus filet ($25). Both were accompanied by mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. Only the dreaded cold butter-on-cold bread basket and sluggish service (despite a small crowd) detracted from a flavor-rich experience.

Report from the Strat

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:12:00 -0700

A reader asked (possibly in jest) how the Hard Rock Hotel was vis-a-vis the Stratosphere. While I don't have the basis for an A:A comparison, I can comfortably say that if you can afford the Hard Rock, it's no contest. Under new owner Goldman Sachs, the Strat appears to have -- if you'll pardon the expression -- passed its peak and begun a slow descent into seediness.

The slot mix is very "blah" and decidedly third-tier, with lots of generic machines and ones you've probably never heard of before. And while the HRH's casino floor is designed so that it contains and heightens the energy, it's the opposite case at the Strat. The latter is an anachronism: a post-Mirage casino designed with a pre-Mirage "capture" mentality.* It's absurdly strung out, as though intentionally diffusing and minimizing the energy of the play that's taking place. The amount of action looked pretty respectable for a Monday night but was muted by the immensity and sparseness of the space itself.

It's like MGM Grand without any of the upside. If you're heading to the showroom be sure and pack water and provisions (or hire a rickshaw) because you're in for a long hike. While Goldman Sachs may have been cutting back on staff, the timeshare barkers -- a holdover from the Carl Icahn era -- continue to accost customers at will. By what twisted logic do casino executives convince themselves that allowing their patrons to be hassled in this fashion is actually good for business?

* -- for this we have Lyle Berman and Bob Stupak to thank, but they've long since left the building.

Super-screwed at Santana

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:54:00 -0700

Morgans' gradual obliteration of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino continues apace, in this February photo. Actually, this was one of the few flattering angles to be found.

Ever since Morgans Hotel Group plunged into the Las Vegas market, first with Echelon and then the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, it's been in over its head. Latest case in point: trying to run an ostensibly major concert venue like it's the Suncoast showroom.

Based on what we encountered during Saturday night's attempt to see Supernatural Santana, if you're planning to catch a show at The Joint (sorry, "The Rogue Joint"), better get there super-early and pack a picnic lunch, too. At 15 minutes to curtain time, lines both for ticket purchase and for "Will Call" stretched waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back into the new convention area. An understaffed box office of (by our count) two ticket sellers was clearly inadequate to cope with the turnout. Knowing defeat when we saw it, we took our business over to The Palms.

Is anybody else fed up with Morgans' make-it-up-as-you-go-along style? Or what about its conversion of the once-elegant HRH into a scrum of buildings that strongly resembles an office park with some light-industrial facilities out front on Paradise? No? Just me? OK.

Speaking of The Palms, the place was crawling with customers, as always -- including a septet of German lager louts (but that's another story). So who does Station Casinos CEO Frank Fertitta III think he's kidding when he writes off the value of Station's minority stake in George Maloof's place?

Maloof takes offense at this diss of his property and rightly so. Fertitta grossly overvalued Station when he took it private and now looks like he's "stashing" some of that excess valuation via this Palms writedown. As feats of ledger-demain go, this one wouldn't even make it as an afternoon magic act at the Greek Isles.

ColSux makes peace

Mon, 18 May 2009 16:19:00 -0700

After sporadically butting heads, Columbia Sussex CEO William J. Yung III and Kentucky preservationists have reached agreement on the immediate future of the old Bavarian Brewery. Yung had bought it and an assortment of nearby properties on the rash presumption that the Bluegrass State would vote in casino gambling and he'd be one of the lucky licensees. He went 0-for-2.

Today's compromise preserves the most historically significant buildings while giving Yung the green light to demolish everything else. The accord may make it easier to flip the site. It also removes one very contentious issue from the table, should the CEO make another casino push. So it's a rare win-win for ColSux.

Quote of the Day

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:30:00 -0700

“‘That’s a little out there, that’s a little fey, maybe I won’t do that, maybe I’ll butch that one up.’ I think I might have done that.” -- Roger Thomas, about second-guessing himself on the designing of The Mirage and Treasure Island. Thomas, inarguably the most influential designer in Vegas history, is profiled in the new issue of The Advocate.

Moulin Rouge, R.I.P.

Thu, 07 May 2009 13:47:00 -0700

For those of you who live outside of Southern Nevada, here's an excellent seven-minute summation of the rise and fall of the Moulin Rouge, beginning with yesterday's fire. The conflagration effectively writes finis to any further attempts to revive the site, which didn't even draw a single bid at Tuesday's bankruptcy auction.

The (real) Bridge of Sighs

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:36:00 -0700

... and if you look closely you can see Venetian Macao executives loyal to Brad Stone being led off to suffocate in the piombi or drown in the pozzi. OK, so I totally made that last part up; too many hearings of Ponchielli's La Gioconda will have that effect.

Trop snoozes, loses

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:23:00 -0700

Like a hot potato, the Tropicana Las Vegas continues to bounce from Columbia Sussex to Tropicana Entertainment and now maybe into the hands of Alex Yemenidjian. (This management-contract arrangement looks more like laying the groundwork for a sale ... if so, thanks for taking S&G's advice, guys. It's worth what you pay for it.)

A top price of $380 million can be viewed either as a bargain -- $11 million an acre, a long way down from the berzerk price paid by ColSux two-plus years ago -- or a boondoggle, seeing as even $380 mil represents an 84X cash-flow multiple. Somebody's got a job ahead of them.

Unfortunately, TropEnt CEO Scott Butera hasn't had his eye on the ball. Now, there wasn't anything he could do to keep the Titanic and Bodies exhibits from jumping ship to Luxor. But he pulled the plug on Folies Bergere and the Comedy Stop. Then, having given magician Dirk Arthur the boot, Butera's minions had to reverse field and grant the illusionist a reprieve through September. (So if you go to the Trop in April, the only entertainment offering will be an afternoon magic show. That's it.)

Just another day at the Trop.

As of Sunday, the Trop will have no (as in "zero") marquee attractions to tout. So it's an understatement to say that an agreement "in principle" with comedian Bobby Slayton doesn't come a day too soon and a formal contract needs to be inked yesterday.

When Nero played an as-yet-uninvented instrument, Rome burned. Whilst Butera fiddles, the Trop merely continues fade. Unless TropEnt's song and dance about repositioning the Trop is just a softshoe act, playing for time until the whole problem can be deposited in Yemenidjian's lap.

Ever since he took the reins at TropEnt, Butera has been fixated upon getting the Tropicana Atlantic City back (which he should) and, secondarily, with regaining Casino Aztar in Indiana (which he did). But the LV Trop has clearly been a low priorty and now he's washing his hands of it. Which means the real problem won't be Yemenidjian's but that of Trop employees and their equally neglected customers.

Patience, thy name is a Harrah's Entertainment bondholder. A surprisingly large number of these long-suffering souls are willing to wait just shy of a decade to redeem their distressed Harrah's debt. They're better men than I.

This book looks like a must-have. And, no, Huntington Press didn't publish it. But we do have a nifty new edition of Whale Hunt in the Desert, thank you for asking.

The Unlucky Club & other Case Bets

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:40:00 -0700

Did somebody build the inaptly named Lucky Club (above) over an Indian burial ground? A deprivation of access is but the latest indignity suffered by this North Las Vegas grind joint. While it was still the Speedway Casino, it was ravaged by fire. Years earlier, it was the Cheyenne, most famous for having its bookeeping described as "smoke and mirrors" by then-Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible. That rumpus -- and a few others like it -- would dog casino speculator Shawn Scott for the rest of his spotty career. Last we heard, Scott had hunkered down in the Virgin Islands.

Better fortune was in store for the long-on-the-market Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas, which couldn't find any takers not so long ago. I'm guessing "undisclosed price" is code for "fire sale."

(Update: It sold for $98 million.)

At least I'm not alone in thinking that Las Vegas Sands is headed over the brink. So does John L. Smith who has more bad news for Sheldon Adelson.

Need to raise awareness of your bookmaking service? Hire a gambling addict as your pitchman! The surprise isn't that this, er, novel marketing initiative was ashcanned but that it got as far as it did. Earth to Better Bet, Earth to Better Bet ...

Earth to Wynn ... Weather forecasters have been predicting high Thursday gusts of wind all week long. But Wynn Resorts must not have paid its cable TV bill because it sent window-washers up Encore anyway. Not surprisingly, something went wrong and they had to be rescued. Now that everybody in Vegas is on a curtain-wall craze, expect crises like these to multiply exponentially.

Going out on a limb, the Las Vegas Sun says that Sens. John Ensign and Harry Reid were doing the right thing ... now that a consensus has formed and the story has faded, making it safe to take a stand.

Wendover: Casinos, yes; mental health care ... not so much.

If you're going to lose your marbles in Nevada (some would say I already have), don't do it in Wendover. It's still OK to lose money there, though. Wendover Will approved this message.

On second thought, you might not want to bring your money here, either. At least not if you use debit cards. Where do I sign the petition to abolish the Nevada Legislature? They don't need any stinking due process, do they?

CityCenter contest!

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:00:00 -0700

While building the Stratosphere, maverick casino owner Bob Stupak ran out of money, leaving the tower only partially erect. Wags were quick to dub the stymied Stratosphere "Stupak's Stump."

Stupak, of course, eventually finished the tower -- although it proved his undoing in the gambling industry. I was reminded of this while pondering MGM Mirage's predicament with its forcibly foreshortened Harmon condo-hotel. (If it had gambling, we'd call it a "failsino.")

At a truncated 25 stories (or roughly half its intended height), The Harmon cries out for a nickname but so far nobody has risen to the occasion. That's where you, dear readers, come in. How does "Lanni's Lump" grab you? Or "Murren's Midget"? Perhaps even "Baldwin's Bump"? "Perini's Plinth," anyone?

Better still ... suggest your own nickname for the mountain that was made into a molehill. Let the alliteration commence!

Station vs. Boyd IV: This time it's spite

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:23:00 -0700

Inside the wacky world that is Station Casinos' executive suite, business judgment is evidently trumped by getting even with your main adversary. How else to explain Station's eight-month push to get zoning approval for Losee Casino Station? The company is sitting on a 58-acre non-gaming parcel at the northeast corner of Craig and Losee roads.

In addition to needing a zoning variance, Station must also contend with North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon's stated opposition (which has softened a mite of late) to creating new gaming enterprise districts in NLV while several existing ones remain unexploited. Then again, Montandon is running for the GOP gubernatorial nod in 2010 and the Fertitta family are george Republican donors, so a change of heart may be in the offing.

As for this "Losee Casino Station," it's a project Station pulled out of its ass (and rather stealthily, at that). It has every appearance of being done to checkmate Boyd Gaming's adjoining Park Highlands project (the former "North Coast"), which Boyd obtained by agreeing to surrender the gaming entitlement on land it owned further south. As a business move, it makes scant sense.

Architect Ed Vance's design for Station Casinos' quickly forgotten Castaways site.

Surely major casino companies don't act out of pettiness and spite, I hear you say. Consider this: Durango Station remains in decade-long limbo and previously announced projects for Inspirada (in Henderson) and Cactus Lane, near South Point, are in a holding pattern -- as are redevelopments of the Palace Station and Wild Wild West areas. And don't forget the long-mooted, long-deferred Castaways Station (or whatever that promised casino-restaurant will be called). Or that, just a short drive down Craig Road, new $662 million Aliante Station is trying to make its nut.

No, defying all logic, Losee Station has somehow risen to Priority #1 status. I wish I could put it more politely but Station is throwing a "cock block" on Boyd. The company's appetite for brinksmanship knows no bounds.

Nationalize the casinos?

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:04:00 -0700

Some news stories are too far-out crazy to ignore. This week, it's XinhauNet's prognostication that Uncle Sam will go into the casino business any day now. Or, as the over-imaginative reporter puts it, "some people are talking about the possibility that the U.S. government will bail out, own and operate the casinos to get huge revenues the government badly needs."

The rationale is: The guvmint is about to nationalize the banks; the banks own the casinos; ergo, Washington will own the casinos. Even as a syllogism that fails, since you'd have to have a lot more casino defaults for its premise to be even half-true. Undeterred by reality, XinhauNet dredges up a "Washington economist" who suggests that the feds skip the intermediate step and just take over the casinos themselves, thereby reaping a predictable supply of cash flow.

If nothing else, this bizarro take on the current economy gives an excellent idea of who screwed up our worldview would be if we all grew up in Communist China.

Speaking of which ... massive and overwhelming federal economic intervention is a good thing, quoth Sheldon Adelson (at least when China does it), who also disses the democratic process in his latest serenade to the ChiComms.

Earth to MGM Mirage ... last week's Las Vegas Weekly carried a junior-page ad (p. 18) for CityCenterCareers.com. Its affect is somewhat disassociative, as the accompanying picture shows The Harmon at its intended full height, not the 27-story stump for which MGM will have to settle, thanks to inept construction work. If this ad keeps running as is, MGM is going to look like it's severely in denial, promoting a version of CityCenter that will exist only on VegasTodayAndTomorrow.com's "Dreams" page.

More M Resort pix

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:15:00 -0700

Armed with my first digital camera (which the Significant Other won during the brief run of "The Real Deal" at the Venetian), we scoped out M Resort on opening night. If Encore marked the return of "the red casino," M responds with what might be called "the resinous casino." If you grew up in a region thick with sap-laden trees, the look will be familiar:

This pillar motif runs throughout the resort ...

... as here, over the slot floor.

Fixtures like these ...

... also make nifty places of concealment for the domes that mask the PTZ surveillance cameras.

This lovely canopy in the grand foyer ...

... is but a stone's throw from the check-in desk.

The sports book. Obviously.

The requisite wild-and-crazy casino carpet, for those who dig that jazz.

Blown-glass ornaments in the VIP players' lounge, where the TV (not shown) ...

... was set to Family Guy, in a gesture of impeccable taste. Other teevees throughout the property were tuned to either ESPN or Fox Noise, er, News. The lounge was also home to ...

... this floral arrangement. (Like, duh.)

Sample table setting (out of several) in one of the smaller meeting rooms.

Just add conventioneers and stir. (Groovy carpet, huh?)

Lastly ...

... your humble blogger comes to grips with one of M's self-service beverage stations. As you can see, I'm partial to the Real Thing. And, yes, I often look similarly vexed. All this and we still got home in time for United States of Tara. (Toni Colette can play damn near anything.)

Enjoy!

M in pictures

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:16:00 -0700

Well ... sorta. You'd think a billion dollars might buy a decent press kit but M Resort's didn't arrive at LVA HQ until the day after the opening. To add to the farce, most of the pictures aren't bonafide photos but extremely obvious computer-generated renderings. As a PR effort goes, this was a real face-plant. You know what they say about first impressions and second chances.

Anyway ...

M's overall vibe is one I'd describe as "understated elegance." If the message of Encore is that nothing succeeds like ripe excess, M aims for a decidedly un-Vegas image -- Southwestern simplicity and a moderately upscale position, and oh yes, we do have gambling here.

The foyer of the spa, which wasn't quite finished on opening night. There are, among many other amenities, two heated pools. One is 101 degrees, the other 104 Fahrenheit. I neglected to ask why the three-degree discrepancy was so important.

You wouldn't guess it from this rendering but the Ravello lounge has excellent sightlines and is an intimate -- but not claustrophobic -- venue for live music.

M Resort's eponymous bar. We skipped this one, I think.

Rooftop restaurant Veloce Cibo was closed for a Marnell family event (it's a big family, I hear). The only way you could get that view out the window -- practically atop Wynn Las Vegas -- would be if Veloce Cibo was in the belly of the M Resort blimp.

The foyer of Marinelli's. In terms of decor, this is the fanciest of the M restaurants. Gastronomically, we were too maxed-out to sample the fare.

The Studio B kitchen, just off the buffet. Try as I might, all I could think of was the council chamber in Babylon 5 ("Delicacies by Delenn"? "Noshing with the Narn"? "Lunch at Londo Mollari's"?) We overdid it at the buffet proper but the cooking staff really put its best foot forward for the opening-night crowd.

A standard room. You can't really see it at this size, but the "view" out the window makes the Strip look several miles closer than it actually is.

A flat suite, with another incredible (as in "not to be believed") view.

Partial view of a "Classic" one-bedroom suite.

The lobby of the conference area. Overall, it's almost as swanky as Encore, if not as breathtaking as Red Rock Resort.

Does the billion bucks show up in the final product? Yes. Is it worth the (not inconsiderable) drive? Yes. Hopefully it will stand up to wear, tear and cigarette smoke, as M made a powerful first impression of "affordable luxury," offering a higher-than-average number of amenities in a soothing atmosphere. We'll see how that imprint is sustained once the slot machines start chiming en masse and the players light up in similar numbers ... and let's not kid ourselves: In this economy, large numbers of anything (except foreclosures) tend to be welcome.

M-enations

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:29:00 -0700

Last night's grand opening of M Resort wasn't quite your usual Vegas casino debut. The 4,000-7,000 (sources vary) who turned out for the VIP preview were an older, more outwardly affluent and buttoned-down crowd than one expects. Nor is the presence of Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Dina Titus and former Sen. Richard Bryan an everyday occurence at one of these hootenannies.

Also in attendance, though we missed them in the crowd and the resort's disorienting layout, were bloggers extraordinaire Hunter Hillegas, Steve Friess and the Queen of Comps herself, Jean Scott. LVA's David Matthews also turned out, but the Significant Other and I had taken a powder -- missing the Son of Cirque umbrella show -- before he arrived.

Verdicts on M are, suffice it to say, all over the place. Big LVA kahuna Anthony Curtis was remarkably impressed and Jean was arguably even more so. Our resident poker pro was nearly as upbeat but had a few minor qualms. Both Messrs. Hillegas and Friess were pretty 'meh,' although Friess was the less guarded of the two in his summation. As the latter is quick to concede, his photos don't do M justice, whereas Hunter's gallery gives a very accurate impression of the resort. (And, yes, that is a jolly-looking Friess in the third photo.)

I do have to agree with Hunter that the casino floor is more than a bit -- how shall I say? -- generique. Those who worry that server-based gaming (or server-readiness in M's case) will erase much of the idiosyncrasy from the slot floor will have their fears confirmed at M.

The Las Vegas Sun has been all over the M opening like a tight-fitting suit, complete with photo gallery and video. Coverage by the Las Vegas Review-Journal has been somewhat more restrained. The R-J does have an attractive slideshow. Over at the "multimedia" department (where we hear they're still struggling with a newfangled concept the kids are calling "fire"), they couldn't manage any video footage -- just the breathless declaration by Nathan Tannenbaum, "How 'bout the Sunday night fireworks way on the south end of the valley ... ?" over a lame graphic. ("How about it?" I wouldn't know -- because you don't have any f***ing footage.) There is some pre-opening video video, if that's any consolation, though it leaves an unfairly "blah" impression.

With Matthews and Scott "pro," and Hillegas and Friess "con" on M Resort, I was hoping Richard Abowitz or David G. Schwartz would weigh in with tiebreakers ... but nothing yet. And why all the fascination with the last wheeze of Siegfried & Roy? The charity bash they headlined looks like it cost more than it could have garnered.

Or maybe I'm just grumpy because nobody succeeded in taking any snaps of Kristin Davis. Oh well ...

Joint 2.0

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:48:00 -0700

Yesterday, a large gaggle of local media traipsed through the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino's in-progress new version of The Joint (or Joint 2.0, if you will). Those on hand included Mike Weatherford and Jason Bracelin from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, City Life's Mike Prevatt and Dave Surratt, as well as a gushy, gung-ho reporter from KLAS-TV, among many others (but not "the Hindenburg," thankfully).

As is the case with many a hard-hat tour it bordered on pointlessness, in that you're looking at an empty concrete shell much of the time. Only the stage (40 feet deep, with a 69-foot proscenium) actually resembled what it will eventually become. The stage's dimensions, we were informed, match those of the Aladdin Theater for the Performing Arts ... site of ABBA's only Las Vegas appearance, by the way.

Why these preview tours aren't given when the facility is in some semblance of finality is one of the enduring mysteries of Las Vegas. Hence, computer-generated renderings will have to provide an idea of the finished product, which ought to look very much like this:

All those seats can be stored beneath the stage on a series of beds that roll out at the touch of a button, yielding this look:

As you'll see, the sound-and-lighting booth has been moved to smack-dab in the middle of the main floor. Not only will the stage be flanked by giant video screens, a third, even larger one (18' X 24') will hang at the rear of the set. Other technical specs include:

• A 96-channel mixing board • 12 subwoofers, distributed in clusters of three apiece • 23 "delay" loudspeakers (presumably to simulate the resonance that is being soaked by the acoustical-absorption material that will cover many of the surfaces) • 38 small-ish flat-screen TVs • four video projectors • 28 moveable lights • a live-blogging station for media coverage • WiFi access throughout.

As big as it looks, the furthest seat is 155 feet from the stage and I can report that the sightlines are excellent (something that could not always be said of Ye Olde Joint, with its flat main floor). If your taste runs to blood sports, Joint 2.0 can be rejiggered to host wrestling, boxing and mixed martial arts, like so:

HRH exec Paul Davis said the goal of the new facility was to cosset "arena-sized productions in a small-capacity [4,000-seat] venue." Why upsize the old Joint? The market has changed, particularly in terms of the size of the shows -- and the guarantees demanded by the artists themselves. ("We're doing our best to keep ticket prices in check," Davis promises.)

Aforesaid artists shan't have to mingle with regular people, as they can go straight from a loading dock that accommodates three buses or trucks to a four-dressing-room backstage area, augmented with a luxurious green room. The latter is connected via a spiral staircase to Wasted Space, if the artist feels like a late-night jam session.

Keeping with the current Vegas spirit of pointedly sequestering the haves from the have-nots, the second floor of Joint 2.0 is all-VIP. The side balconies will be outfitted with highboy tables (it's standing-room only one floor up) and the middle of the tier is given over to seven luxury suites, approximately 430 square feet apiece. Some can be made even larger still, thanks to retractable walls. There is seating for 12 or ...

... an ottoman-laden lounging area, if you can't be bothered with watching the concert. Back on the main floor ...

... the foyer and back-bar area are spacious indeed. The style of the railings (not shown) is carried over from the previous Joint. The walls are done in the style of a guitar fretboard, one which we were assured is musicologically correct.

The HRH was able to obtain Paul McCartney as its first superstar act because -- as Davis put it -- "He wanted a down-and-dirty, old-fashioned rock 'n roll show," where he could see "the fans right down in his grille" The fact that the Joint's opening coincides with McCartner's Coachella gig didn't hurt either. General Manager Yale Rowe said "all the stars aligned" to land McCartney in the HRH's lap. "We were quite conscious of having multiple styles [of music]. We wanted to have a mega-concert that was going to open The Joint."

Open the doors and see all the computer-generated people!

Back when Ed Scheetz was still calling the shots at HRH minority owner Morgans Hotel Group, he identified Priority One as raising ADRs at the property. Rowe says that goal met with "great success" initially, when the Vegas market was at its zenith. "The consumer is almost dictating what the price points are going to be [now]," he added, noting that the Hard Rock's room rates aren't as resilient as those for most Morgans properties, though not as depressed as those of Vegas in general.

The Joint represents $60 million of a $750 million expansion, stacked atop the $770 million Morgans (or rather, its bank) paid to acquire the HRH. Much of that money is also going toward 60K square feet of convention and meeting space. Hence the 860 additional hotel rooms, in two towers, that are coming on line in August and December, respectively.

Another reason for the more-than-doubling of the property's room capacity is that, according to Rowe, the HRH has been doing spectacularly well with high-end play, save one respect: "We haven't had the room space that satisfies their discerning requests." And anyone who's followed the "Omar" Siddiqui* scandal knows just how unpleasant a dissatisfied high roller can be -- sort of like unfed infants, only more hysteria-prone.

(* -- Turns out Siddiqui's luck wasn't entirely bad. It seems he cleaned the clocks of Tim Poster and Tom Breitling back when they owned the Golden Nugget.)

HRH officialdom keeps voicing the refrain that their project has been "fully financed" since Homer was a pup. In light of this, a question was irresistible: Why didn't Morgans finance its pre-existing commitment to Echelon instead of channeling all that dough into the Hard Rock? How did the latter jump to the head of the financing queue? (It was Morgans' terminal fecklessness that helped send Echelon into cold storage, though that may yet prove a blessing in disguise.) Morgans says they'll get back to me on that but I'm not holding my breath.

While gambling still represents but a third of the HRH's cash flow, Rowe adds that he "always gave Hard Rock the credit for debunking the theory that all the revenue had to come through the casino." He also praises Peter Morton's regime for proving that the pool could be a major source of lucre. As for the current decline, he says it's consistent across all departments of the property. Allowing that it's "tough not to clamor up and play defense all the time," Rowe says, "We still succeed in getting volumes of people" into the place ... although the casino floor was utterly dead on Thursday. It can't help that construction has rendered the HRH damn near inaccessible.

The only bad news regarding The Joint is that, from the outside, it looks like somebody has flung a big-ass, off-white warehouse on the Paradise Road side of the HRH. Between that and a new parking garage and hotel tower on Harmon Avenue, Morton's original boutique hotel is almost completely masked from the street. A couple of Hard Rock neon icons on the exterior of Joint 2.0 will provide scant relief from what can only be described as a ghastly design miscalculation.

At least this will remove any ambiguity from giving directions to the HRH in the future: "It's the huge, fugly jumble of stuff down there; you can't miss it."

'Gang' at Encore

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:49:00 -0700

Yesterday saw an unusual -- but altogether pleasant -- change in the Vegas Gang routine, as we taped "on location" from a seventh-floor room in Encore, overlooking Echelon and the increasingly ominous Fontainebleau (so disproportionately massive it looms over its neighbors like Godzilla or Gammera over mere mortals). Both David G. Schwartz and Jeff Simpson joined us by speakerphone, giving the conversation a certain Charlie's Angels vibe.

It's Fontainebleau ... coming to stomp us all! Run for your lives!

Spoilers ahead ...

I'm clearly very much in the minority on the likelihood of a Mirage or Bellagio sale. Cash cows they may well be, but there seems to be a strong consensus that their tires are being kicked and serious talks are underway, as well as that The Mirage has become a stodgy property.

Also that MGM Mirage is a Vegas-Vegas-Vegas-obsessed company and would be willing to sacrifice the Gulf Coast and Detroit markets -- the latter of which it utterly dominates -- to keep the CityCenter bucks a-flowin'. (And why would MGM bail on Detroit and not on the sickly Illinois market instead? Or Tunica? Or ... ? If Alex Yemenidjian would pay $435 million for an Illinois license, what might he put down on actual, operational asset?)

Such a strategy would fly in the face, if not of sense, at least of recent casino industry thinking, whereby you try to maintain strong footholds in the second-tier markets and not put all your chips on Vegas (unless you're Steve Wynn and even he tried it once). It would be like Harrah's Entertainment evacuating Atlantic City to raise money for its stalled Octavius Tower.

And you could knock me over with a feather if MGM sells its Macao demi-concession to partner Pansy Ho or back to her father Stanley, especially after all the hoops MGM had to jump through to get into Macao. Bailing on the world's #1 casino town would be an indicator of extreme desperation bordering on insanity.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to get into the provenance of the urban legend that Phil Ruffin's Treasure Island purchase was just a big-ass/short-term loan to MGM, with "T.I." serving as collateral -- and at 55% interest, no less.

Deep Red: Encore

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:53:00 -0700

As much as casino-watchers have been vexed by the total media clampdown on all but the smallest scintillae of revelation about Steve Wynn's Encore, it was worth the wait. Or, to put it differently, Aria and Fontainebleau have just been given an exceptionally difficult act to follow.

I say that as someone who was disappointed with Wynn Las Vegas when it debuted in 2005. Despite the modernity promised by the exterior, what I found inside was a pastel-colored version of Bellagio -- smaller, muted, rearranged and more than a bit fussy.

Let it not be said that there is anything pastel about Encore, nor anything tentative. For starters, primary colors are back "in" with a vengeance, specifically red. Now, I like red but we're talking RED!!! For relief, the VIP area is dominated by green. But did I mention to utter profusion of RED??? If Dario Argento designed a casino, this would be it.

My tour group, which included fellow Vegas Gang-sters David G. Schwartz, Chuck Monster and Robert Earl's favorite writer, Hunter Hillegas, had the good fortune of being in the tour group led by Wynn Resorts design guru Roger Thomas. For the latter, Encore represents his Vegas swan song and it closes the circle in other way: As Thomas put it, when Wynn and he remade the downtown Golden Nugget, it was the death knell of that Vegas staple, "the red casino." Not another would be built after that. "We killed [the red casino], we get to bring it back," Thomas says by way of explaining the riot of scarlet luxuriating throughout Encore.

Above and beyond its coloristic impact, Encore is the most tactile casino on the Strip and probably in the U.S. You'll be wanting to "cop a feel" many times over, whether it's of the wood finishes, the wall coverings or the sculpted textures like the "wall of bodies" that ushers you into nightclub XS. (Once you get in -- if you get in -- the view across the dance floor and the "European" [read: topless] pool to the al fresco bar opposite is one of the bigger "wow" effects at Encore.)

They mix a mean sangria there, too. The color scheme is as gilded as the casino is reddish and Thomas confesses, "I'm certain Goldfinger had a little to do with it." Whatever the case, it's like Christian Audigier -- The Nightclub (right down to the fashion boutique) but for people with taste.

There will be other articles and blogs appraising the aesthetic and functionality of Encore, so I'll leave the assessment to experts and confine myself to various jottings made while trying to walk and scribble simultaneously.

Thomas, who's been with Wynn since 1981, describes himself as the "partial author" of The Mirage, the seminal property of contemporary Las Vegas, and "full author" of Treasure Island. He's not necessarily patting himself on the back, as he says that one of the lessons learned at the Island was not to fully theme a casino (a lesson that several non-Wynn casinos failed to heed) and not to have one designer do the entire hotel. His subsequent approach has been to assemble teams he knows and admires, who hit it off with Wynn himself, and who have the reputation of being on time and on budget.

Despite those last criterion, not every last light fixture or handrail was in place (some uninstalled fixtures, left carelessly in the middle of a hallway, nearly cost posterity the future writings of Dr. Schwartz). Nor did we get more than the teensiest peek at the Encore Theater, which has been redone -- again -- for Danny F. Gans. The proscenium has been moved back but that's the only specific we were given.

Flocked with butterflies. Other than the ocean of RED, the design element likeliest to be mentioned are the omnipresent butterflies. They're in the moldings, the tiling, the wall coverings ... in short, everywhere. Not only do they "represent an abudance of good luck," they provide Thomas with a metaphor for the transformative process he and Wynn enjoy: turning the unromantic elements of cement and steel into an escapist paradise. There are no Strip views at ground level because, Thomas says, "When you're cocooned at Wynn, everything is beautiful." (He did not, however, croon" ... in its own little way.")

The third design element, less obvious to the eye, is a running motif of garlands of laurels. These were inspired by the most famous tale of metamorphosis (no, not Franz Kafka's), the myth of Daphne, depicted in a statue in the Lobby Bar & Café. Yet another reinvention is Switch, the restaurant whose decor changes every 20 minutes. It sounds godawfully corny but, in actuality, it's wondrous to behold -- like a dining experience by way of Cirque du Soleil. The revelation of multiple 18-foot chandeliers is a particular coup de theatre. "Steve can't help himself," Thomas explains. "He's a lover of theatre."

Encore's Esplanade mall has less natural light, more space than its opposite number at Wynn LV, which was one of the areas where it was most obviously "Bellagio II." The decision to mix design styles is evident in the amalgam of sharp angles and wave forms in the conjoined Rolex/Wynn & Co. boutiques. It provides relief from the overall aesthetic -- as intended -- without making a violently contrasting statement.

(My favorite design element, in truth, was the chair in Wynn & Co.; pure Heaven to anyone with an aching back. I want one, dammit!)

If natural light is somewhat lacking in the mall, Encore's atrium more than compensates. This vaulted, latticed space is Wynn's biggest "You have arrived" statement to date. Its conservatory-writ-large style manages paradoxically to be both grandiose and subdued. It's crowned with a pair of huge sconces salvaged from a demolished hotel in Cap d'Antibes.

Path of Excess = Palace of Wisdom? In the mall and, in fact, throughout the property, Thomas' preference for layering details sometimes induces sensory overload. The stated intention was to create a property that would require several visits to fully appreciate and one can report: Mission Accomplished. For instance, if there's a spa in town more ornate and in-your-face indulgent than the mere lobby of the Encore spa, well, I've not seen it. Several in my group agreed that Wynn could charge people for audio tours of Encore, and rightly so. It feels less like you're being shown through a resort and more like being given a walk-through of a working palace.

A good thing, though, that Wynn's attempts to buy up and demolish the nearby Guardian Angel Cathedral were rebuffed, though. Not only could Wynn use some guardian angels in the current economy, Encore's beauty parlor overlooks the cathedral and, were it not there, you'd have an all-too-clear view of some genuinely craptastic buildings on Covention Center Drive. The Catholic diocese did Wynn a favor by turning him down.

Of the many iterations of "suite" at Encore, we were shown two: a Tower Suite that makes up in comfort what it lacks in size (it's generous to call it a "suite," though it may make you feel better about what you're paying to stay there) and a Salon Suite in which you could land a helicopter. Something very intense and Asian was going down in what appeared to be an even larger suite at the end of the hall -- a huddle with the CEO of Tagruato Corp. perhaps?

Even the elevators are differentiated in their decor. One had a red alligator-skin motif while another was clad in butterflies rampant on a field of purple. I mean, we're talking spare no expense here, folks. The fabric for the drapes in the VIP room was purchased three years ago and kept under wraps until now.

The Sinatra restaurant is dominated by gargantuan, larger-than-life-size portraits of the Chairman of the Board himself. Is it a restaurant or a shrine? I felt I ought to genuflect or at least make the Sign of the Cross. But the real conversation-starters here are two hefty obelisks which flank the bar, while overhead sails a bejeweled galleon. Thomas rescued these from the shipwreck that was a failed New York City restaurant.

Society will be, for want of a better term, Encore's bread-and-butter restaurant, as well as a must-visit for chocoholics. Thomas' goal here was, "A room that Oscar Wilde would like."

Now stop for a moment. Can you imagine Thomas saying that to William Weidner and getting anything more than a basilisk stare? Or having a conversation with Gary Loveman about the metaphorical significance of butterflies? The Harrah's Entertainment CEO would probably just want to know what the return on invested capital from butterflies was going to be.

Which goes to the heart of what makes a Wynn property different from anything else in the marketplace: His willingness to invest monetary and artistic capital in things which don't translate to the bottom line in a quantifiable way but which create a "must-see" factor. I have no idea what the ROI of the Bellagio fountain is but it's -- and not arguably, I'll contend -- the fulcrum of the Strip, the icon off of which everything else plays. Wynn is an anomaly: a casino industry CEO with the temperament of an artist ... but an artist who's chosen a very unusual art form by which to express himself.

To have come all this way and not have spoken of the Encore casino floor itself is not to imply that it's an afterthought (the way the Venetian's casino floor feels like a waystation between the super-grandiose lobby and the Grand Canal Shoppes, for when you simply must shoppe 'til you droppe). Actually, quite a bit of thought has clearly gone into the casino, the part of Encore in which Wynn's experience with Macao is most prevalent.

Even more than Wynn LV, it's dominated by semi-secluded areas. But unlike the serpentine traffic patterns of its sister property, Encore's casino is neat and orderly, laid out in a street-and-block system, with superior lines of sight. Bucking the "more is more" trend, Encore has only 850 slots, which we're told are on an infrastructure ready for server-based-gaming when (or if) it takes off.

The innate conservatism of Wynn's approach here is the sort of thing that stands him in good stead with the banks. (Server-based Aria could be a triumph of gaming technology but it's a helluva ski jump.) In the mass-market area, each '21' table is flanked by a pair of table lamps, providing an appealingly homey (or "very residential," in Thomas-ese) vibe to the table game pit.

Steve Wynn looks suspiciously like he's been Photoshopped into his own atrium at Encore, but at least it gives you a sense of scale.

It's difficult to rank Encore in the pantheon of recent Las Vegas megaresorts because Wynn's most serious competion in the last decade has been ... Steve Wynn. Even had Palazzo's rollout not been a near-total botch, it still has that expensive-shopping-mall-that's-doomed-to-fail look about it. Planet Hollywood, had it all reopened simultaneously, would have flung some serious "Wow!" at its audience, but Robert Earl's had to relaunch it incrementally and progress of late has been agonizingly slow. Other than the Criss Angel bomb Believe, it may be the Strip's most expensive work in progress.

So ... will Encore create excitement unto itself? I believe so. Does it represent not only a leap forward for Wynn but an even bigger one than expected? Yes and yes. But ...

Will it drive business? If I owned WYNN stock (which I don't), I would sleep very well tonight.

Quote of the Day

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:43:00 -0700

"My job is not to design the best hotel. My job is to design the best hotel experience ... I hope people propose in my spaces." -- Roger Thomas, design supremo for Steve Wynn, conducting a tour of Encore, which opens tonight (Dec. 22).

Isle of Capri Biloxi previewed

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:07:00 -0700

Ironically, now that Isle of Capri has put its Biloxi plans on hold, we finally get a look at what the revamped Isle (minus the "of Capri" and the parrot) would look like. It's not beauty-contest winner but, if it can be financed, would be an improvement on the very sparse-looking hotel-casino presently on the site. The current Isle Biloxi has been dubbed "the Tropicana of Biloxi," which is almost the worst insult anyone can level at the place.

Meanwhile, Isle's market cap continues to dwindle ($88.6 million as of today), as the executive makeover continues. It's difficult to foresee a turnaround scenario for Isle that doesn't involve a stopover in Chapter 11, given the size of the hole dug by previous management, but Glenn Curtis thinks Isle's an attractive takeover target (for whom, I wonder?) and a bargain play among current stocks.

Quote of the Day

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:33:00 -0700

"I won't quote back some of the things that were said about me. This is a family program, I know." -- President-elect Barack Obama, referring to the thuggish and expletive-laden locutions favored by Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-IL), whose crimes against humanity include shuttering Frank Lloyd Wright's Dana-Thomas House, along with many other Illinois landmarks.

Where do we go from here?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:08:00 -0700

Let's say, for purposes of argument, that the casino industry has supped full on meta-megaresort development and needs several years to digest the feast. What then?

The answer, to judge by yesterday's G2E panel of design, construction and development experts, is not to stand still. Rather it's to find the near future within the past.

"We have existing facilities that are allowed to get tired," said architect Joel Bergman. Anybody who visited Luxor at the time MGM Mirage took it over from Mandalay Resort Group knows exactly what kind of dilapidation he's talking about. Prudent operators, Bergman argues, will realize that have to have competitive, well-maintained facilities.

Perini Building's Dick Rizzo went one step farther, positing it as an absolute necessity: "You can't let them get tired or they'll lose business." With operators like Harrah's Entertainment and MGM Mirage cutting back maintenance, this thesis is about to be tested.

Besides, tribal casinos are running up Vegas' back, we were told. Bergman says they're not only becoming more resort-like but, "Vegas has, by participating in these, created its own competition." Since they cater to discrete, relatively isolated markets, Rizzo added, their only competition is the patron's amount of discretionary income.

He also had a CityCenter story. Namely, that even while the foundations were being poured, it was still but a nebulous concept and the decision as to what to build was still in flux. Its hotel, retail and convention components have doubled from the original conception, Rizzo disclosed.

That shift of focus is in line with Rizzo and Bergman's concept of the future. The former describes the current crop of casino designs as "all entertainment-driven" because that's the new profit generator. Atlantic City and Las Vegas, Bergman noted, are "going to have to expand what we do well," by dint of expanding retail and convention offerings.

He sees an early 2010 comeback for the casino industry. But Rizzo warned that things will get worse before they get better: "The best we have now is a bear market really and the bottom is yet to come."

Fire sale at Harrah's, MGM?

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:10:00 -0700

That was one of the bombshells dropped this morning at Global Gaming Expo. According to a member of a "state of the industry" panel of G2E's Casino Design track, Harrah's Entertainment has several unprofitable properties that were for sale. "Now I believe any of [Harrah's casinos] are on the block," he said, adding that similar things could be said of MGM Mirage.

Architect Joel Bergman revealed that he'd laid off 29% of his staff last week: "Work has simply dried up." Perini Building's Dick Rizzo added that Kerzner International is still "bullish" on City Center II, at the north end of the Strip and its centerpiece will be an exact reproduction of the company's Atlantis Dubai resort (plus casino, presumably).

Dubai and Abu Dhabi were identified by Rizzo as two of the main growth pipelines that continue to flow. So does the California tribal-casino market, along emergent casino markets in New York State and Pennsylvania. He's also working with the Seminole Tribe in Florida, where two Hard Rock-branded casinos will double in size, starting next spring.?

As for job cutbacks in the tribal market, Rizzo doesn't think those are economy-driven but "an excuse to get leaner." He defended MGM Foxwoods as a victim of poor timing, saying it can't be judged on current performance. He pointed out that the soft debut of MGM Foxwoods prompted the mothballing of a similar expansion at nearby Mohegan Sun.

Rizzo shrugged off the implications of server-based gambling: "The public sees the casino the same way." And while he saw no prospect of non-gaming Strip resorts, off-Strip ones are conceivable. Given the current condo glut, Trump International and others are looking to convert those properties to pure hotel plays, at least until the market takes a more propitious turn.

Recently, MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman took up President Jim Murren's contention that we may not see new construction on the Strip for a decade (does that make it a "meme"?). Panelist John Restrepo interprets that as a way of saying, "We don't know" where the world is going and "a bit of an overstatement," reflecting what Donald Rumsfeld infamously called "known unknowns."

Per S&G prediction, we're seeing a market correction in the prices paid for land on the Strip. Restrepo says the value per acre has readjusted -25% to -30% and even more so elsewhere in Las Vegas, including the corridor south of Mandalay Bay. Still, lenders are now requiring as much as 50% equity before they'll commit to a project, Restrepo notes

Restrepo also doubts the viability of the "If we build it they will come" paradigm that has so long served Las Vegas. Besides, it still remains to be seen whether Joe the Player is tapped out ... and Restrepo hears that a wave of car repossessions is imminent.

That being said, his company is performing feasibility studies for new projects, even if those developments are going to have be put on ice until a few years hence.

Harrah's wants your two cents

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:13:00 -0700

Not as in your opinion, this time, but just to book a room. That's right, guys, Harrah's Las Vegas is offering two-cent Tuesdays. The catch is you have to stay in the Strip casino that most closely resembles an urban penetentiary. But at these prices, why let some beastly architecture stand in your way?

One reader takes a less heady view of it, though, opining that "the credit market patient has gone critical." No question, the timing of the casino industry's romance with private equity buyouts was impeccable -- if you mean "impeccably bad," that is.

Thank god it's Friday, because that means tonight is the two-hour premiere of Sanctuary. This series was originally created for the Internet and, when I saw the pilot 'webisode,' a year ago, I couldn't fathom why the SciFi Channel wasn't picking this up (instead of renewing moribund Stargate Atlantis). Yes, it stars Amanda Tapping. Why do you ask?

1 Picture = 1,000 Words. Your caption here.

Case Bets: PR, Trump

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:49:00 -0700

Press releases are always manna on a slow news day but sometimes you get one (OK, many) that make you want to pull your hair. For instance, I received such a specimen late yesterday from an agency that shall remain nameless -- last name rhymes with "Coke" -- breathlessly informing me of a new restaurant at Luxor. There was all the usual, meaningless verbiage: "fun, high-energy vibe," "rock-n-roll flair," etc.

The kicker was the announcement that aforesaid restaurant would be "Exploding at Luxor in mid-September." And when did I get this super-urgent blast? That's right, September 29, the next-to-last day of the month; this Tail End Charlie goes right back there with the time that Tilman Fertitta didn't announce the grand opening of his Golden Nugget steakhouse until two weeks after the event. (P.S., The food was greasy, Tilman.)

As for all that "high-energy," "rock-n-roll" mierda, if I'm going to this place (called T&T), my intention is to enjoy my dinner at a pace and in an ambience that don't give me indigestion, not to shake my booty 'til I puke. If want to rock out, I'll go home and put on my ABBA at Wembley Arena DVD (if the climactic rendition of "Hole in Your Sole" doesn't get you moving, check your pulse). And when I want to eat ... I probably still won't go to T&T after this lame-ass promo.

One more thing: The press release also mentions that the Titanic exhibit, still anchored at the Tropicana, will be making port at Luxor "in 2009." Which could mean 14 weeks or 14 months. (Translation: Luxor has no idea.) But at least we know we shouldn't expect its trans-boulevard voyage to happen anytime soon.

Pleasant surprise. I was able to tag along for a tasting menu at DJT, in Trump International, which is subdued and even posher than it looks on the Web site (the restaurant, that is). At the moment, it's also the best-kept secret in Las Vegas, judging from the handful of diners on a Friday night. The recently repriced menu is quite affordable, depending on how closely you watch your budget: You could also find yourself dropping $75/person here without even trying.

The hotel lobby, too, is quite restrained by Vegas standards, although the superabundance of gold leaf, gold glass and onxy would scream "TRRRUUUUUUUUUUMMPPP!!!!!" even were his name not already writ large on the building. The main problem it faces boils down to three words: location, location, location. Unless your prime directive is to log considerable quality time at Fashion Show Mall (Trump's porte cochere is directly opposite Nordstrom's), you're a bit of a hike from anything else. And, if and when Elad Properties gets started on redeveloping the vacant land where the New Frontier once stood, you'll be on the backside of a construction site, too.

One doesn't normally equate the words "Trump" and "bargain play" but the hotel's saving grace may be its room rates. Our top-notch research team vetted a series of October-December dates and found Trump to be consistently competitive with -- and sometimes cheaper than -- Paris-Las Vegas. It's also less expensive, whether by $40 or $170, than Wynn Las Vegas. Then again, my hunch is that customers would probably pay the extra $40 for the cachet of staying at a Steve Wynn property and right on the Strip -- not to mention being at the front door of Fashion Show Mall rather than the back one.

The view from your window

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:47:00 -0700

That's the name of a popular feature on the blog of Andrew Sullivan, who posts photos that readers send him from around the world. Well, if you happen to be my boss, Anthony Curtis, the view from your office window will be this:

... at least in 2010, when Wyndham Hotels & Resorts opens the first tower of its Desert Blue timeshare complex. Look on the bright side, boss. Maybe the value of Huntington Press HQ will rise by virtue of sheer proximity. As for the look of the building, it doesn't say "residential" to me -- more like a corporate center or part of a downtown university campus.

We're no Pyongyang!

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:25:00 -0700

A story about an unsightly, unfinished ziggurat in Pyongyang, North Korea afforded an architecture critic an opportunity to throw a roundhouse right at Las Vegas. Lumping it together with Shanghai as the bad-architecture capital of the world, California Polytechnic State University (San Obispo) Architecture Dept. professor Bruno Gilberti couldn't single out a single Vegas property for opprobrium, lumping the entire Strip together as something that “has no authentic sense of place and is thus more than a little soulless.”

Well, unlike Gilberti, I can nominate a single-worst building in Las Vegas and it's ...

Yes, Harrah's Las Vegas, the hotel that put the "Ugh!" in "ugly." This weird behemoth brings the charm of Warsaw Pact architecture to Sin City. The Bulgarian State Central Bureau of Collective Internal & External Revenue would feel right at home here.

Harrah's LV is also the despair of photographers, partly because of the extreme width of its façade (not shown) and the considerable distance that the hotel towers (I wanted to say "clump") are set back from the street. I'm reliably told there are only two decent photographic angles on this place: right up close to the façade, concentrating on one or two details (like the jester), or an extreme wide angle -- in which case you'll be lucky to pick out any detail at all.

Harrah's big makeover plan for the east side of the Strip is generally believed to start with the demolition of the Imperial Palace (just barely visible to the right). But at least the IP looks good at night, under the blue wash of its floodlamps. No amount of lipstick can spruce up the pig that is Harrah's LV. (But its casino does an extremely good volume of business, possibly the best on the Strip, so what do I know?)

In second place ...

If Michael Gaughan's South Point doesn't eclipse the fugliness of Harrah's it's not for lack of trying. Not only does it obtrude from the South Strip landscape like a swollen thumb on steroids, it's as unimaginative as all get-out. It's just one gargantuan Stalinist block, its charmlessness ever so slightly ameliorated by its canary yellow paint job.

In Gilberti's defense, he singles out the much-abused (but still lovable) Tropicana for embodying the "real and popular style that the old Las Vegas ... once had," which was pretty much my reaction when I walked in there for the first time in 1998. Of course, that was before Aztar Corp. began letting the place go to seed and then allowed Columbia Sussex to club it like a baby seal.

Gilberti also lauds the old Golden Nugget but I think he ought to take a gander at its current incarnation. Anyone nostalgic for golden age Vegas ought to feel at home there, since Tilman Fertitta has the place looking like the hundreds of millions of bucks he's reinvested there.

And as for the clunker "that has sat unfinished for more than a decade [it's North Korea; whaddya expect?] and has been ... called 'The Hotel of Doom'," surely Kim Jong-il can get his bosom buddy Stanley Ho to take on the task of finishing it. The Hotel of Doom looks like the sort of white elephant that old Stanley goes bananas over, thinking himself on the very cutting edge. If Kim Il-sung's degenerate playboy heir throws in a casino concession, it's a done deal.

The Alystra is toast

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:11:00 -0700

OK, so it was a derelict that's been closed for 10 years and unlikely ever to reopen. But the Alystra is now officially "a total loss." Too bad. It was an attractive building that happened to sit in a sort of mini-Bermuda Triangle where no casino could flourish. It also was operated in a manner that brought it afoul of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. There were some flutters of interest 16 months ago, then silence. Since the Alystra had become a homeless hangout, it'll probably be no great mystery how it caught fire.

A bad month for Adelson. First, there was a shaky performance on the witness stand in the Richard Suen/Las Vegas Sands lawsuit. Then a first-quarter loss. Now he's been questioned in a bribery investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government. Sheldon will probably have to do a little 'splainin' to the Control Board when he gets back from Jerusalem.

Luxor 2.0: A review of the ongoing makeover has been posted at VegasTripping.com. The verdict: "Pharoah's Tomb Meets Airport Bar." Hard to believe that Luxor is already 18 years old -- unlike Excalibur, which only looks like it's been around for 30 years or so.

Nathan Burton at the Flamingo. I went. I saw. (And the stunt pictured here does not figure in the act, so caveat emptor.) The magic tricks were sloppily executed -- you had to wonder what the coterie of rival magicians in attendance thought of them -- and almost made one nostalgic for Hans Klok. For this Harrah's Entertainment ditched Society of Seven?

No warp speed here: A story that broke on the Web last week (and was picked up by LVA's "What's News" page six days ago) finally crept into the pages of the Dogpatch Daily. (UNLV's David Schwartz has a good critique of the situation, though.) The same writer who branded Strip casinos as "monuments to gullibility" now turns his scorn upon patrons of the Las Vegas Hilton's Star Trek attraction -- while managing to meet the R-J's two-factual-mistakes-per-story quota and confusing "premiere" with "premier."

But he's not alone. A local publisher mistakes "ringer" for "wringer" in ...

An utterly ridiculous column that suggested the Democratic presidential ticket be suggested by a coin-toss. Seriously. It's difficult to decide if this is a bigger insult to Las Vegas Sun readership or to the democratic process itself, this flippant (pun intended) notion of hinging the fate of our country -- and perhaps, by extension, the world -- on a game of chance. As one Sun reader notes, "I admire your ability to get paid for this."

Since one normally needs to pack a lunch and some No-Doz to finish a Brian Greenspun column (and I couldn't even get through this one w/o skimming), I'll boil down the "logic": "Hillary Clinton has worked harder than any person I know of to become America’s president [and] running for president, and the presidency itself, has to be the hardest job on the planet."

So? Meaning if Greenspun's next-door neighbor worked harder than Hillary Clinton to be on the donkey-party ticket, then he/she would deserve it even more? As Clint Eastwood's William Munny observes in Unforgiven, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

Greenspun cites exit polls as holy writ, whereupon his moving finger moves on to write, "We all know that the polling this year has been wrong at best" (Who's this "we all"? I know no such thing. Do you?) "People, for good or bad reasons, don’t tell the truth to pollsters when it comes to race or gender." Well, if true, that puts paid to those exit polls in which Greenspun places so much stock.

After calling upon the respective campaigns not to "short-circuit the democratic process," out comes the loony coin-toss idea. Why? "We accept the coin toss in every other facet of our lives," quoth the suddenly Solomonic Greenspun. Oh, do we? Maybe that's how they make important decisions at Greenspun Media but I don't think, for instance, that the board of Harrah's Entertainment decided not to accept Penn National's buyout offer because the nickel came up "heads."

Hey, let's have representatives of the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis over to the Bellagio poker room to decide the fate of Iraq in a game of Texas Hold 'Em, with Halliburton taking a "rake" of the pot. Works for me.

The clue to Greenspun's thoroughly trite and un-democratic "solution" can be found in a passing comment that enfranchisement "for far too long has been a burden to Americans rather than a blessing." I'll leave you to ponder the disturbing -- and elitist -- implications of that telltale remark.

Elvis has already left this building

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:37:00 -0700

Two days ago, VegasTodayandTomorrow.com broke out the specifics of FX Real Estate & Entertainment's Elvis-themed resort, set for the southeast corner of Harmon Avenue and the Strip, gleaned from an SEC filing. Among the principals is Paul Kanavos, previously involved in a protracted, unsuccessful courtship of Riviera Holdings.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal weighs in today, though I doubt its coverage of the project will cause a run-up in FXRE stock (especially when the 'expert analysis' of the project comes not from, say, Bill Lerner of Deutsche Bank, but from an Elvis impersonator).

Despite aforesaid impersonator's unbounded -- and not completely disinterested -- confidence in the project, the story waves a couple of red flags. For one, if a $3.1 billion price tag for a 2,269-room casino-hotel looks a mite optimistic, that's because the costs of land and capital, plus "additional pre-opening costs" are not factored in.

Also, while you don't get any more Middle America than Elvis Presley, FX says it will "compete within the upper strata of the luxury market" [emphasis added]. Even if the monied elite and Elvis Country intersect to form a perfect set, that upper stratum of the Strip is going to be pretty darn glutted with new product by late 2012, when "Graceland," or whatever it's going to be called, it scheduled to open.

As if the prospect of heavy borrowing wasn't enough to puncture the balloon, we're informed that "a series of leases held by various businesses occupying the land will have to be terminated or reworked with varying degrees of legal difficulty and additional costs." Which means that somebody (or a whole bunch of somebodies) has FX over a barrel and that the final tally will be probably be considerably greater than the company is presently prepared to admit.

I'll be "all shook up" if this project ever happens.

Gibbons gets one right. The governor who seems lucky to find the bathroom in the morning has somehow, defying all odds, managed to go 2-for-2 in filling vacancies on the state's gaming regulatory boards. Either Jim Gibbons has a hitherto well-concealed perspicacity where the casino industry is concerned or he's got at least one advisor who not only knows what they're saying but manages to get through to Midnight Jim.

OK, so there wasn't really a "vacancy" on the Gaming Control Board, unless you count the one that Gibbons created via some middle-of-the-night shenanigans. However, outgoing Gov. Kenny Guinn was in the bad habit of using the NGCB and the Gaming Commission as soft-landing spots for political allies who were either facing unemployment (Keith Munro) or had been booted by the voters (Ray Rawson).

Gibbons' NGCB pick, Randall Sayre, has come up aces and his choice of a new commissioner, Tony Alamo Jr., is playing to rave reviews. Alamo did have a brush with controversy -- over six years ago -- when he was named to replace Elias Ghanem on the Nevada Athletic Commission, on account of his father's then-status as a VP of Mandalay Resort Group. (The Athletic Commission oversaw boxing matches and Mandalay liked to put them on, ergo a potential conflict of interest.)

But with the elder Alamo out of the industry since MGM Mirage took over Mandalay, what caused a bit of a stir in 2001 is a moot point now. No, the real scandal is that -- as one of the people holding ultimate responsibility for the probity of gambling in Nevada -- Alamo Jr. stands to earn only $40K a year. That's less than I make. And it's inexcusable.

Rove Endorses Hillary

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:05:00 -0700

Don't believe me? Read it for yourself. Such praise he heaps upon the senator from New York! Lord Voldemort is even more laudatory of her than he is of Sen. John McCain. But since Rove was complicit in the shameful sliming of McCain during the 2000 primary season, I doubt anyone would believe it if he started heaping warm fuzzies on the Republican nominee-to-be.

Then again, Rove may just be returning the favor of Sen. Clinton's de facto endorsement of McCain: "I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." (See it here.) As James Fallows writes ...

"To produce a clip that the McCain campaign could run unedited every single day of a campaign against Obama? That is something special."

By the way, now that Sen. Obama has floated the possibility of making outgoing Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) his secretary of defense, I'm liking his candidacy even more. When it comes to straight talk, Hagel makes even McCain look like a wallflower.

A metaphor-rich environment: Now that Bush II's presidential library has been awarded (?) to Southern Methodist University, The Chronicle of Higher Education has launched a whimsical contest for potential designs, with the proviso that they be executed on the back of an envelope. You can view the results, watch contest video and even vote on the finalists. It's better than American Idol!

Make of it what you will, but recurrent themes are cruciform shapes, underground bunkers and structures that appear to float in the air with no visible means of support. There's also a W-shaped concept and something resembling a Mayan temple.

Some of these designers are imaginative folks and perhaps should be put to work brainstorming the next generation of "casino-based destination resorts," to dust off an old Steve Wynn coinage. After MGM Mirage rolls out City Center, the bar will be set dauntingly high for all who follow.