David Mckee's Stiffs & Georges - Lake Tahoe

Blimps on the radar

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:03:00 -0700

Dipping into the dispatch box, S&G finds the following tidbits, courtesy of the nice people at J.P. Morgan:

Alex Yemenidjian is serious about revamping the Tropicana Las Vegas. He's just inked a contract with Bally Technologies for a player-tracking system and other BYI goodies ...

... fading interest in MGM Grand Detroit has caused MGM Mirage to take it off the market. Also, with the company looking at price concessions to its CityCenter condo buyers (i.e., forfeiting money it was counting on to finance CityCenter), it may need to borrow against its Detroit palace, one of the few MGM properties still unencumbered ...

... Atlantic City, like Macao, is and will probably always be essentially a daytripper market. So there's symmetry in the fact that China State Construction Engineering Corp. has been signed to finish the stalled Revel project on the Boardwalk, to the tune of $1.7 billion. A July 11 opening is predicted. This is the best news to emerge from Atlantic City in quite a long while.

Speaking of good news, gaming revenues for Nevada's July are in and, basically, they don't suck. Yes, the Silver State was down 8% and the Strip was 11%. But June's year/year comparisons were far suckier (-15% on the Strip), so there's some consolation to be had. In fact, compared to a series of truly craptacular year/year comparisons -- all in double digits, except for last May -- it's darn near cause for celebration.

Table game drop was down overall but the casinos played lucky, particularly at baccarat. (Watch the first-season Mission Impossible episode "Odds on Evil," if you need a quick primer on this game. You'll get scintillating performances by Martin Landau and Barbara Bain in the bargain.)

Slot play is way down (-17.5% win on -15% handle) and North Las Vegas, bouyed by Aliante Station, was the only part of Clark County to have a positive month. Laughlin got hammered pretty badly (-19%) and neither Reno (-21%) nor South Lake Tahoe (-33%) seems likely to ever fully recover from tribal competition across the border, Tahoe especially. If there was a moment for some "unbundling" by overexposed companies, this is it.

Didn't get the memo. Would somebody break into the R&R Partners biosphere and let oxygen into the office of Billy Vassiliadis? "Billy V" was the author of this boneheaded pensée, which he shared with the Los Angeles Times:

"You've got to drop your rates, but you don't want to create a sense that this is a discount experience or that the experience itself has been diminished."

What the ... ? Las Vegas' recent success was built on the perception (and actuality) of a "discount experience," and lower prices are unlikely to "diminish" a tourist destination that is now synonymous with exclusivity and unaffordability. Vassiliadis, like Sheldon Adelson and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, seems convinced that the current doldrums are -- to use my favorite Internet-board gaffe -- "a blimp [sic] on the radar."

They need to wrap their heads around the reality that 2004-like levels of business were damned good at the time (superb, in fact) and that Vegas needs to get back to the value-based messages that fueled the preceding 15 years of growth. Or, as David G. Schwartz writes in a particularly trenchant DieIsCast.com entry: "Of course, unpredictable events can make a hash of any predictions, so it’s possible that five years from now the casino industry will be employing 100,000 more people than it does today. That would be after the federal government offers Americans a $10,000 annual tax credit against travel to Las Vegas, and Las Vegas alone."

Seems like some folks in the marketing bidness should be taking Dr. Schwartz's classes.

Carl Icahn, comedian?

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:02:00 -0700

"As a result of [Tropicana Entertainment's] continued use of the Tropicana marks in interstate commerce, the Tropicana marks have achieved fame and notoriety and are associated in the minds of consumers nationwide with a consistent level of high-quality casino, entertainment and hotel and restaurant services." -- from court filings by Tropicana Entertainment, proud owner of the Tropicana Express in Laughlin, proprietor of the Horizon in Lake Tahoe (above) and evicted operator of the Tropicana Atlantic City. Uh, yeah, that "notoriety" part is right on the money. TropEnt is suing the Tropicana Las Vegas to enjoin it from using the "Tropicana" name.

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 ... )?

Case Bets: California, Packer pickle, Macao pix, Holy Cow!, Singapore, RoboPoker, etc.

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:24:00 -0700

Editor's note: An item involving Crown Ltd. contained factual errors, which have been corrected (as you'll see). I apologize for the misinformation. My thanks to the reader who pulled my head out of my @$$.

California gamblers stay and play ... at home. While the recession has made some inroads on tribal-casino revenue in the Golden State, it's losing less ground than Las Vegas. Some of those Vegas losses will eventually be recouped, but this day of reckoning was bound to come.

Unlike Las Vegas, which is arguably suffering from having too many competing profit centers within each resort, California casino bosses interviewed still view entertainment as either a loss leader or a one-off. I never thought I'd say this but Las Vegas could use a little more "old school" thinking right now.

James Packer, the guy who can't catch a break, is finds his casino company in even more hot water, in a case of the sins of the father being visited upon the son. The plot surrounding Crown Ltd.'s courtship of a self-banned high roller (and convicted felon) is thickening considerably. Seems paterfamilias Kerry Packer may have been pressuring crony John Williams to get pathological gambler Harry Kakavas back to the tables.

Williams, for his part, rolled on the late Mr. Packer, ~~who's now got some 'splainin' to do~~. ~~No wonder the young Packer's pursuit of Cannery Casino Resorts collapsed like a pup tent.~~ The money quote, if you will, is: "[Williams] said it was common for patrons to rip up [self-exclusion] cards and that, in his view, Mr Kakavas's loss of $2.3 million in 28 minutes was recreational gambling."

If you lose $82,000 per minute, it's not recreation. It's degenerate gambling.

Globe-trotting Ian Sutton is back from Macao and G2E Asia. The sights! The sounds! The smog!

(Update: Ian says it's not smog but mist, as forthcoming videos will show.)

Holy Cow II: GlobeSt.com, normally a continent source of business news, is shocked -- shocked! -- that Steve Johnson's proposed casino on the former Holy Cow site will include a Walgreens. Smelling salts, stat!

But there are some interesting revelations, For one, the reason that Palazzo's flagship retailer is also a Walgreens is that it was a compromise Sheldon Adelson effected with the landowner ... Steve Johnson. (The mere fact of Adelson compromising is newsworthy enough.)

Turns out, that purchase may set the record for an on-Strip acquisition, at an alleged $50 million per acre -- Phil Ruffin, eat your heart out! Johnson also paid through the nose for the Holy Cow site. The price? $23.5 million/acre for land north of Sahara Avenue. Egad!

Columbia Sussex's casino portfolio continues to crumble. Tropicana Entertainment parent Tropicana Casinos & Resorts is selling its Amelia Belle riverboat (thereby forfeiting the New Orleans market) barely two years after the ship was acquired. Amelia Belle is former Harrah's Entertainment vessel, having been Bally's Belle of Orleans.

It's a canny strategic move for new owner Peninsula Gaming, which now has a Louisiana riverboat as well as a racino and four OTBs, not to mention a small flotilla of Midwest riverboats. TropEnt CEO Scott Butera, meanwhile, has less and less over which to preside. At the moment, his ambit consists of four riverboats, mostly in tertiary markets, two casinos in Laughlin and one on Lake Tahoe. Is this TropEnt's future: A succession of piecemeal asset sales? Sure looks that way.

Bad news for Sheldon Adelson. Over in Singapore, rival Genting's mega-budget Resorts World at Sentosa is letting news outlets like Bloomberg know that 60% of the project will ready for a soft opening in early 2010 (i.e., February-March). Projected attendance figures have been revised 20% downward.

In a rapier thrust at Marina Bay Sands, a Genting exec said the company was having regular meetings to make sure it came in on its $4.5 billion budget. Full completion of Sentosa is projected for 2012. Sands is going to have a sufficiently tough time making its nut without Genting crashing the party so soon ... to say nothing of the fact that Genting enjoys much higher brand equity in that corner of the world.

RoboPoker has risen from the grave. Electronic table games have been OK'd for eight New York State racinos. Though the Lege hasn't signed off, the Empire State's lottery board is confident it has the authority to make this move unilaterally. Poor Atlantic City is dying the death of a thousand cuts.

Congratulations to Penn National. It's scheduled to inaugurate a new pavilion for Empress Joliet today. A March 20 fire resulted in a three-month closure of the boat and substantial fiscal hardship for Penn National. In a noble gesture, CEO Peter Carlino kept employees on the payroll even though his ship was hors de combat. Capt. Carlino, S&G salutes you.

You know it's a bad day ...

Mon, 11 May 2009 11:53:00 -0700

... when the company riding to your rescue is Columbia Sussex. Had Tropicana Entertainment not farmed out operation of the Horizon in Lake Tahoe to its William J. Yung III's company, it might have been closed outright. As matters stand, Horizon owner Edgewood Cos. is mulling tearing the place down and redeveloping the site. The Trop Ent-out/Col Sux-in arrangement appears to have been a compromise brokered to keep the Horizon open for at least another three years in return for an extension of TropEnt's MontBleu lease (due to expire in 2018).

But make no mistake: The Horizon is now entering the casino version of hospice care. TropEnt's swift decimation of the Horizon, to render it as noncompetitive with MontBleu as possible, has already cost it one unlikely set of customers -- the South Tahoe High School prom, slated for D-Day.

A prom in a casino? If you need a ballroom, it makes a world of sense, even if it does sound like the setup for a creakier-than-usual Facts of Life episode in which everybody learns A Valuable Lesson about the perils of gambling, or something comparably homiletic.

Bleak Horizon

Tue, 05 May 2009 16:48:00 -0700

Anybody who thought Columbia Sussex CEO William J. Yung III was exiting the casino industry, let alone going quietly, got a bracing dose of reality today. The older of Tropicana Entertainment's two leases in Lake Tahoe, the Horizon, is in wind-down mode. It has two years to go on its lease (although it could theoretically operate into 2014) but TropEnt CEO Scott Butera is wasting no time rolling up the sidewalks.

Rather than be bothered with the continued management of the Horizon, Butera is fobbing it off on Lake Tahoe Realty I, a creature of Columbia Sussex. The transfer kicks off in true Yungian fashion with the elimination of 75 jobs. As bad or worse from the customer's standpoint, the table games operation at the Horizon is being axed altogether and the 719-slot inventory will be decimated by two-thirds or more. While all of this is straight from the Bill Yung playbook, there's no indication so far that it's anyone's fault but that of Butera. As he prepares to consolidate Tahoe operations around MontBleu (the former Caesars Tahoe), he'd clearly like to see as little as competition from the Horizon as possible. Hence its demotion to grind-joint status.

How this ledger-demain plays with landlord Park Cattle (aka Edgewood Cos.) will be interesting to see. Yung's stewardship of the Horizon (which, according to recent litigation, could be characterized as malign neglect) was a source of great vexation to Park Cattle. One can only wonder how Edgewood execs feel about being back in business with Bill Yung. If the Horizon's recent history -- not to mention its savage downsizing to 200 gaming positions -- is any guide, Park Cattle's stated goal of converting it into a non-casino hotel is going to happen sooner rather than later, options notwithstanding.

Inside the Harrah's filing:

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:28:00 -0700

Hare 1, Tortoise 0: After reading through the March 13 Harrah's Entertainment 4Q08 filing this earlier this week (one of the benefits of using mass transit), I set it aside for a few days, enabling the Las Vegas Review Journal's Arnold Knightly to beat me to the punch. What caught both his eyes (presumably) and mine (definitely) was a line of copy in which Harrah's acknowledged that its poor Las Vegas Strip performance was partly driven by "fewer hotel rooms availabe due to room remodeling and remediation projects at three Harrah's properties [including The Rio]."

You will recall that, whether to save time or money (or both), Harrah's made an end run around the Clark County permitting process when it wanted to make changes to several of its hotels. In some instances, these alterations not only didn't match the blueprints submitted to the county, they also compromised fire safety. (Lax inspection on the county's part allowed the problem to mushroom.)

Harrah's is presently under indictment for these cheeseparing measures, which were uncovered by dint of a forceful R-J investigation. It was a rare instance of the R-J speaking truth to power and the paper has suffered mightily for it, as Harrah's has retaliated in measures both great (an advertising boycott) and petty, like banning the R-J from Harrah's Las Vegas properties.

Whatever punishment the judicial system may or may not levy upon Harrah's will be nothing compared to the dent this misadventure put in Harrah's balance sheet. (By the way, I should acknowledge that Knightly read the Tolstoyian 160-page version of the quarterly report, while I settled for the 34-page "Cliff's Notes" version.) Harrah's may have thought it was saving money by going rogue but that false economy has now come back to bite it in the ass, to the tune of $60.5 million.

Gargantuan writedowns swung income from positive to negative in almost every jurisdiction. The international sector has bled red ink for two years, as London Clubs has proven to be a money-loser. The venture, like the company's hapless flip-flopping in Kansas, is typical of the spasmodic decisionmaking that has characterized CEO Gary Loveman's stewardship. Seemingly random projects (Slovenia, Singapore, the U.K.) were lunged at and toyed with briefly, then ditched. Having settled for one of the smaller fry of the British casino industry -- London Clubs -- and then unable to swap it for a piece of the big boy, Rank PLC, Harrah's must settle for selling off a little bit of LCI here or there.

Harrah's Atlantic City numbers would look much worse if the company didn't cleverly roll its Pennsylvania competitor, Harrah's Chester, into the A.C. portfolio for reporting purposes. If you had to assign Harrah's Chester to a region (as opposed to "Other"), the only one that fits is "Atlantic City Region," though that's a bit like rolling Laughlin numbers into "Las Vegas Region."

Debt service is murder, up 2.7X from 2007. 'Nuff said.

If asset sales are necessary, a non-Total Rewards property like Bill's Lake Tahoe would be already positioned for spinning off. However, Harrah's would have difficulty justifying more than a $160 million average sale price for any of its outlying Nevada properties, where cash flow is comparatively small. If significant relief is to be achieved from unloading casinos, some trophy properties will have to be sacrificed. After all, why should the bondholders be the only ones taking a bath?

Case Bets: MGM Mirage, Harrah's, Wynn, Shuffle Master, Taxes

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:05:00 -0700

As we wait for the MGM Mirage earnings report, signs of desperation mount. If the company is willing to cast away a pearl like new, costly and high-yielding MGM Grand Detroit, what isn't sacred? Not even the corporate jet, provided the buyer doesn't welsh on the deal. (Guess those high rollers won't have to fly commercial for a while yet.) Whoever made that offer for MGM Detroit, though ... (s)he's one smart cookie, methinks.

Dumping regional properties at a time when that's where the strength of the casino industry is just doesn't make sense -- although you could probably make a case for ditching the already written-down Gold Strike in Tunica or the Grand Victoria riverboat in casino-killing Illinois. Actually, getting the hell out of the hellacious Illinois market seems like the best idea since forever.

Congratulations, Gary Loveman! You took home $39.6 million last year, while your company was crashing and burning -- not to mention pink-slipping 8% of your workforce. Don't say Loveman isn't feeling Harrah's pain: He's forfeiting a whole $100K in salary for 2009. There goes the college fund!

The casino giant is one step from the bottom of the Moody's bond-rating ladder. In a memo to the SEC, Harrah's Entertainment announced that managers were taking a 5% pay cut and that "it might have to delay expansion, sell assets or restructure debt." Delay expansion? No! Really? That was off the table the minute the ink was dry on the LBO. Refurbishment is also a low priority, as capex costs will be trimmed by as much as 59%.

Meantime, the guessing game begins over which assets might be on the block. In one of the busier threads over at Hunter Hillegas' Two Way Hard Three, fellow blogger Chuck Monster synopsizes the reshuffling of Harrah's properties between various holding companies, which includes a possible abandonment of the volatile (read: shaky) Lake Tahoe market. Sometimes I think Harrah's does this jiggery-pokery just to amuse itself watching the blogosphere try to determine What It Really Means.

In a regional update, most Lousiana markets were slightly down last month -- except Lake Charles, which Harrah's pulled out of, leaving Pinnacle Entertainment in possession of the field. Oops.

Pssst! Don't tell anyone! It's stashed as the second item of "In Brief" but Wynn Resorts is floating a stock offering to the tune of over nine million shares. (Other sources say seven million.) Wall Street had an understandably adverse reaction -- at first blush -- to this 7% dilution of Wynn stock, which closed up $1.07 today. Given that it's a proactive move to retire debt, it's tough to quarrel with Wynn.

Update: Clarification of the Wynn stock float comes by way of Forbes.

As for the undying speculation that Steve Wynn might want to buy back Bellagio or golden oldie The Mirage, one analyst -- Goldman Sachs' Steven Kent -- says he "would be surprised to see Wynn pursue this," given that Wynn is a builder, not a buyer.

Parenthetically, in the above-mentioned blog thread, Brian Fey makes the following, extremely trenchant observation: "Its pretty bad, that here we are almost 10 years later [following Wynn's ouster from Mirage Resorts], and Steve's biggest competition is still Steve's old properties. Just shows you how far behind everyone else is when it comes to the game."

Shuffle Master wins? Rival company Elixir Gaming settled litigation by selling its Asian shuffler business. The Las Vegas Review-Journal sees it as a win for Shuffle Master, while the Las Vegas Sun takes the opposite take, implying that Shuffle Master got its pockets picked -- which could mean an ignominous curtain for just-departed CEO Mark Yoseloff, if that's indeed the case. They report, you decide.

More of the Same Dept.: Democratic leadership in the Nevada Lege is going to do exactly what (little) is expected of them -- jack up existing taxes to onerous levels as a cop-out solution to our budgetary crisis. Booze and cigarettes are the low-hanging fruit of taxation but Nevada casinos better get ready to bend over and grab their ankles, as they're probably the next target of opportunity. Oh, and brace yourself for a much bigger beer-and-wine tab at the casinos if this goes through ... as though casino booze wasn't costly enough already!

Never let it be said that S&G didn't at least once have a kind word for Columbia Sussex. The former Tropicana owner is reducing its carbon footprint. Amen to that.

New man at the Trop

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:04:00 -0700

Last Sunday's Las Vegas Review-Journal carried an interview with new Tropicana Las Vegas President Ron Thacker. It delicately sidesteps potentially uncomfortable questions about the plug-pulling on Folies Bergere or the brevity of Thacker's tenure at Fontainebleau. His fondness for Who Moved My Cheese? earned him some reader derision. I found it a refreshing change from those execs who routinely cite Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat (presumably in search of clues on how to outsource the casino industry to Bangalore).

Thacker is a third-generation casino manager and a well-traveled operator. This should stand both him and the Trop in good stead after the clownish bumbling of hapless Columbia Sussex. He also evinces a longstanding affection for the property, which is a quality any executive there ought to possess. So that's another point in Thacker's favor and he's right that nostalgia is the main selling point down there. With the exception of parts of the Sahara, there's no property that says "old Vegas" (in a Rat Pack sense) quite like the Trop.

But when he says, "We're going to put some money back into the property with the infrastructure itself. Bring it up to the standards our customers expect and our employees expect," you have to wonder if he's read Tropicana Entertainment CEO Scott Butera's business plan. It earmarks $8.4 million for renovations and maintenance this year (that'll get you 1/30th of thrifty Eastside Cannery and about an 80th of Aliante Station) and an average of $5.2 million for each year afterward.

That's not much more than is set aside for MontBleu, up in Lake Tahoe and a small fraction of what Butera proposes to spend on the Tropicana Atlantic City. Then again, in order to do the latter, he'd have to persuade the New Jersey Casino Control Commission to let him have it back and ... well ... you know.

From A(ztar) to Z(ilch)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:05:00 -0700

If Tropicana Entertainment management's bankruptcy plan is accepted by the courts (one bond analyst thinks otherwise), former CEO/sole owner William J. Yung III will be left with -- what's the technical term? -- diddly squat. (So will his unsecured creditors, alas.)

Actually, he'll have less than nothing because he'll not only be forfeiting the remnants of his Aztar Corp. acquisition but also six TropEnt properties whose purchase predated the ill-starred Aztar buy. A portfolio cobbled together in bits and pieces over several years will be gone with the thwack of a gavel.

In which case, it will essentially close the book on The Worst Casino Acquisition of All Time, Bar None. Since Yung swung the Aztar deal by cross-collateralizing his motley fleet of casinos and riverboats, losing the Tropicana Atlantic City meant putting the whole kit 'n kaboodle up for grabs. Yung's dismissive attitude toward New Jersey casino regulations came with a $2.8 billion price tag.

Lighthouse Point: Last voyage departs soon.

I was going to write that no one in the casino industry will miss Yung, but he still owns the odd non-Trop casino, like the Westin Casuarina. So he's not going anywhere anytime soon.

The plan being for the secured creditors to roll their debt into TropEnt equity, one can see why CEO Scott Butera was at pains to complicate, stymie and/or outright thwart various asset sales initiated either by Yung or the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. As a Jan. 2, 2008 Morgan Joseph report pointed out, casino companies sell for higher cash flow multiples when peddled en masse, not piecemeal. For instance, Yung paid a whopping 11.3X EBITDA for Aztar, as compared to the 8.4X he plunked down for a Penn National castoff, the Belle of Baton Rouge.

So maybe Butera really thought he could land a higher price for Casino Aztar than Eldorado Resorts was offering or perhaps he just wanted to queer the deal that was on the table. Either way, the endgame was the same: more money. Since his plan hinges partly on regaining control of cash cow A.C. Trop and Casino Aztar, neither of which is a given (and one of which is exceptionally unlikely), TropEnt is still a long ways from being out of the woods.

Tropicana Las Vegas: Same this year, same next year, same in 2013.

Thinking positively, if Butera can't -- as seems inevitable -- get the Boardwalk property back, he can redirect money planned for Atlantic City upgrades into that eternally deferred Tropicana Las Vegas facelift. There's a case to be made, if not much of a case, for New Jersey to brush aside the $550 million offered by Cordish Co. for the A.C. Trop -- particularly if Butera were bound to the same conditions the Division of Gaming Enforcement recommended imposing on Yung 14 months ago: a one-year probationary license and a 26-point set of benchmarks.

But the Garden State is so revenue-parched that it's unimaginable it will tell Cordish to keep its money. And whatever tenuous faith the NJCCC might have in Butera won't necessarily be bolstered by his turnaround plan. The document makes some concrete promises (including $153 million in A.C. Trop upgrades), and its property- and market-growth projections are mostly conservative. For instance, Butera clearly harbors no illusions about the difficulties ahead in Baton Rouge, where Pinnacle Entertainment has a new riverboat coming over the horizon. God bless him, he's an optimist, though: Who else would postulate five straight years of single-digit revenue growth in Atlantic City?

But Butera's strategy posits revenue growth within the context of relatively flat operating and maintenance budgets. Some outright reductions, at least, can be attributed to the cessation of operations at Lighthouse Point in 2009 and Horizon Tahoe two years later. Were it not for that, Butera's numbers would look like something out of the Bill Yung playbook. In fact, certain of the promised reforms, like "Optimize [read: "tighten"] ... slot hold," centralized corporate purchasing and "utilizing third parties for certain services" are purest Yung. Others, such as a Nevada-wide loyalty-card program, appear to be new. (But why stop at Nevada?)

As for a reinvention of the Vegas Trop, don't expect anything before 2014, at the earliest. Likewise, the overdue replacement of Casino Aztar just isn't in the budget. It's a lean regimen for grim times, but give Butera this: He's not spending money he doesn't have and now the creditors to whom he is answerable will be literally invested in improving TropEnt's performance ... if they hope to see their money again.

Mont-blew it; more E-Can; Trump struggling

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:45:00 -0700

"Montbleu screwed our pooch." That's the conclusion of Chuck Monster, who chronicles a bait-and-switch at the former Caesars Tahoe. It's now part of the prospering casino fleet that is Columbia Sussex and its "pet friendly" package turned out to be more like "pet indifferent." After withholding it for a full year, in hopes of a partial refund that materialized, Chuck has finally released a Montbleu-by-blow account.

New casino overseer Scott Butera may be promising a new, improved Tropicana Entertainment but, from what Chuck says, it's still ColSux as usual for the time being. At least the incident gave him excuse to post numerous photos of Montbleu being inspected by a totally adorable pug named Maxine, who is certain to steal your heart.

E-Can makes the rounds. The reviews of Eastside Cannery keep rolling in. There's a Compton/Dancer critique of its gambling value (good). Steve Friess went a while back and was mildly amused/bemused. For his part, Chuck Monster deconstructs its decor. Our new issue of Las Vegas Advisor contains a lengthy appraisal by Anthony Curtis.

Trumped. Perhaps the single most interesting fact in Chuck's review is buried way down at the end and it's this: On an upcoming weekend, when E-Can is commanding $129/night ($1 less than Circus Circus), rooms at Trump International are going for $163/night -- $38/night less than Excalibur. Yes, Excalibur! (And $346/night less than Wynn Las Vegas.) Can you say "bomb"? I thought you could.

Gold Coast buffet update, etc.

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:24:00 -0700

I just heard from Boyd Gaming and they say that the corned beef/chicken choice at the Gold Coast buffet's carving station was the luck of the draw and not indicative of a cutback. Roast beef, turkey and brisket are still in the rotation, I'm told -- just not on the night we were there. It's not the greatest buffet in Vegas but it's skies above the comparably priced one at the Tropicana, where they actually had the gall to jack up the tab recently, even though the food choices are few and service borders on nonexistent.

Win-win situation? A spy in the ladies' room after a Saturday-night showing of the Mamma Mia! film says that the buzz was very positive, with several ladyfolk saying it made them want to see its Mandalay Bay incarnation* (or see it again). So the notion that the movie might actually put new legs under the stage version, instead of kneecapping it, maybe isn't such a pie-in-the-sky idea, after all.

For those of you who are interested in such things, the movie pulled in $27.6 million its opening weekend, putting it in line with The Devil Wears Prada's opening and $2.5 million-$4.5 million ahead of projected grosses.**

*--Warning!: The video clip also features the horrific noise that is Jerry Lewis.

**--Anyone care to theorize why IMAX showings of a little number called The Dark Knight ($158.3 million in three days) are selling out at Red Rock Resort but not at The Palms? Have customers been burnt once too often by Johnny Brenden's habit of charging $14 for IMAX prints that look like 90 miles of bad road but which his cinemas are evidently too damn chintzy to replace?

Columbia Sussex follies. Even though Tropicana Entertainment is going to be shooed out of the Horizon, in Lake Tahoe, in 2012, owner Columbia Sussex is parting with a few pennies to try and make the place viable in the meantime. Well, at least to the extent of rolling out an Elvis Presley Suite.

That, and there are myriad deferred-maintenance issues to be addressed now that ColSux/Trop has capitulated to landlord Park Cattle Co. This might include the plumbling that got blogger Chuck Monster drenched one memorable night when "a water pipe burst in the ceiling of the casino... raining buckets of water on slot plunkers in the middle of the casino floor and a torrential river of water out the side door of the casino."

Ah yes, the Bill Yung philosophy of "Excellence in Hospitality" in action.

Tahoe: Scratch one casino

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:00:00 -0700

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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