David Mckee's Stiffs & Georges - Downtown

From the mailbag #9

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:55:00 -0700

One reader asks, regarding senatorial aspirant Sue Lowden's esteemed Pioneer Hotel & Gambling Hall:

I'm confused (as usual, but...) - Isn't the Pioneer NOT a gambling hall now, its shell hosting an ABC convenience store & various other small shops?
I don't remember if I ever patronized the place when it was a casino, but its stores are in a good location for the Downtown tourist crowd; the ABC Store is especially popular with our Hawaiian friends. That's good for sales taxes, right?

As for the Vegas Club, please don't vaporize it yet: We're going to stay there at the end of the month, mainly because it's free for me - and a separate free room for a friend of mine - allowing him to attend the Speedway races for that much less money.

You're thinking of the Pioneer on Fremont Street, while Ms. Lowden's establishment is down in Laughlin. And it very much has gambling. As for dematerialization, S&G did not nominate the Vegas Club for that dubious honor but suggested that, as long as Sen. Harry Reid's people are threatening to "vaporize" Ms. Lowden that they make themselves useful and turn their phasers on her grind joint, which is regarded as a bottom-feeder even by Laughlin standards.

The Vegas Club is very much on people's minds, as another reader asks:

How is it possible that TV series VEGA$ starring Robert Urich came out on DVD on October 20 and I saw nothing in the Las Vegas media celebrating the occasion. I saw an ad in Newsweek. They couldn't get something with Wayne F. Newton at the Tropicana or Phyllis Davis and Judy Landers in front of the Plaza or the Las Vegas Club? Sad, sad, sad.

Ah, a Phyllis Davis shout-out. You're speaking our language. And, yes, that VEGA$ release really snuck by, didn't it? In a classic case of the blind following the blind, local TV stations take their cues from the newspapers. The various Greenspun-owned organs have been slashing staff at a fearsome rate, so it's understandable that they'd miss it.

As for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, suffice it to say that staffers there, up to and including head cheese Thomas Mitchell, had to be told that the Moulin Rouge was burning down because -- even though it was happening across the street -- they work in a penetentiary-like building with no windows to the outside world (architecture as institutional metaphor).

So it's not the least bit surprising that our insular and rapidly declining local media would totally blow this one. As for Mayor Oscar Goodman, he had a previous commitment in London, but still ... no proclamation? No declaration that Oct. 2009 was hereby "VEGA$ Day"? Another missed opportunity for some free ink.

Goliath, computer nerd; Lowden Trek: The Wrath of Reid

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:09:00 -0700

As some may recall, the saga of Goliath, the LVA rescue kitten, had a happy ending. Not only has he found a new, loving home but the hyperactive little fellow (whose new owners renamed him "Murderface") has developed an interest in technology:

"Robin said he’s obsessed with the computer — he’ll shimmy up her leg or the back of the chair, then either perch on her shoulder or sit in front of the monitor and bat at the cursor on screen."

Since my two cats only acknowledge computers to the extent of sitting either A) on the mouse pad or B) in front of the screen, effectively blocking it, Goliath would appear to be part of that younger, techno-savvy generation.

Sue Lowden = Klingons? The senatorial candidacy of Archon Corp. Treasurer Sue Lowden is evidently being taken quite seriously by Sen. Harry Reid. So much so that Reid's office has threatened to "vaporize" Lowden, prompting some musings on the proper response to phaser fire. If Reid wanted to do Nevadans a service, shouldn't he instead vaporize Lowden's Pioneer Gambling Hall, a grind joint that's been likened to the barren, depressing, post-2004 Vegas Club downtown?

Eight Vegas shows reviewed

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:10:00 -0700

As promised, Mike Shackleford's WizardOfVegas.com site has launched. It took a while to get the bugs worked out, hence my review of Scarlett & her Seductive Ladies of Magic didn't appear until after the show had closed. However, to the best of my knowledge, you can not only read about but still see all of the following ...

• Amazed

• Anthony Cools

• Gordie Brown

• Marriage Can Be Murder

• Matsuri

• Sin City Bad Girls

• V - The Ultimate Variety Show

Sample line: "Yes, Marriage can be murder ... and so is the food." Enjoy!

Quote of the Day

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:32:00 -0700

"I predict a rough winter for Vegas. Swine flu may not be a pandemic, but it may really mess with the casino business. It could make the economic downturn look mild." -- a locally based casino-industry expert, in an e-mail to LVA.

Aria drives prices ... down

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:23:00 -0700

Contrary to repeated assertions by J.P. Morgan, it would appear that MGM Mirage is putting out promotional specials for Bellagio ... and very aggressively so. Note however, that Steve Wynn's masterpiece is maintaining its price point and Aria is the one having to come down to meet it.

Also, an unscientific survey of mid-week rates parallel to Aria's opening shows that what the CityCenter flagship is doing is sucking the air out of the rest of the Strip, especially other MGM properties. Even Wynn Las Vegas is down to $159/night that week (quotes were predicated on a three-night stay).

The absolute bargain was Downtown's Golden Gate ($12.71) and unless you count Hooters and fellow bottom-feeder Wild Wild West, the lowest on-Strip price was $21.21 at MGM's Circus Circus. The Sahara ($22.40) and Imperial Palace ($25) were close behind. They were ever-so-slightly outpriced by the Riviera ($27) and Tropicana ($29.33).

As for other properties in the lion's den: Excalibur ($31), Luxor ($48.37), New York-New York ($50), Monte Carlo ($58.62), the Green Monster (aka MGM Grand, $70), Mandalay Bay ($72.55), The Mirage ($76.50), THEhotel ($93.29), Vdara ($109) ... with only the Green Monster's Sky Lofts ($600) outpricing Aria.

So, MGM, are you sure this oligopoly business model is the way you want to go? I'm just askin'.

<crickets>

Case Bets: Reid, Goodman, Madison (Holly) & a kegger

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:06:00 -0700

As they say on Dancing with the Stars, in no particular order ...

Eight against Harry: For a speedy primer on the myriad challengers to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), you can't go wrong with Jon Ralston's droll and speedy primer. It even gets props from John Chachas (R-Central Park West), who recently tossed his homburg into the ring. At least one among the posse Ralston calls "Snow White [Archon Corp. Treasurer Sue Lowden] and the Seven Dwarfs" has a sense of humor.

Reason vs. rage: While Steve Wynn was ranting on the boob tube this weekend, Thomas Krugman's column offers an indirect rebuttal to Wynn's Johnny One-Note ("Tax policy!") table-pounding.

Run, Oscar, run! If these poll numbers don't nudge the World's Happiest Mayor into the 2010 gubernatorial race, perhaps nothing will. Oscar Goodman not only has the highest favorables among Nevada politicians included in the survey, he wins one theoretical electoral matchup and ties for first in the other.

Gov. Jim Gibbons' political future looks bleak (read: borderline nonexistent) and there's not much comfort for Hapless Harry, either. Just think how much worse it would be if Reid had an opponent possessing genuine gravitas. Besides, given the rising tide of discontent among Nevada's progressives, there's a good chance that much of Hapless Harry's old base will just stay home on Election Day.

In Oscar's domain, an architect suggests ways to revitalize Downtown by decreasing energy use, increasing sustainability and generally targeting long-term cost savings. The proposal makes a lot of sense -- a virtual guarantee it will be ignored.

Holly Madison tapped an Oktoberfest keg at Siegfried & Roy hangout Hofbrauhaus last Friday. [Your punchline here.]

"Serpent Head" Jr.: If CNN ever has to let James Carville go on vacation, don't worry ...

... SNL's Bill Hader can fill in and nobody will notice a difference.

In other news ...

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:19:00 -0700

I am happy to report that Stella Stevens' Las Vegas Lady did not make it into our "worst Las Vegas-based movie of all time" poll. (As they say in Chicago, vote early and often.) Crazy Girls Undercover, however, was not so lucky.

Scarlett saved?!? & other Case Bets

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:28:00 -0700

Splendid news, lads (and lasses). Scarlett, Princess of Magic may return to the Riviera in nine months or a year ... that is to say, whenever the economy eventually rebounds. This comes straight from Riv management.

Of course, there's a good chance the Riv itself won't be around in nine months or so. It's miracle it's stayed out of Chapter 11 as long as it has. Then again, President William Westerman has an enviable track record when it comes to beating the odds. People were writing him off 11 years ago and he's still here.

Ah, the good old days. Remember when the Gold Spike was hands-down the scariest casino in Las Vegas? The Siegel Group has done a splendid job of spiffing the place up but a reminder of the Spike's dodgy not-so-distant past came in the form of a guilty verdict in a Nov. 17, 2008 shooting. According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Las Vegas Sun, the attempted murder was a "grizzly homicide." Does that mean the assailant was firearm-proficient bear?

Now that autumn is here, get out and enjoy Lake Mead while you still can.

Investors may be tiring of endless debt swaps and postponements. A proposed 64-cents-on-the-dollar (at 10% interest) issuance of MGM Mirage debt laid an egg. When it took out $12 billion-plus, due next June, MGM must have been either high as a kite on CityCenter cash-flow projections when it agreed to that deadline or assumed that, when push came to shove, it'd just rejigger its debt load anyway.

A wise colleague of mine once said in re Donald Trump, "All he ever does is restructure his debt because that's all he can do!" That has now become the modus operandi of the casino industry at large -- except for Mr. Cash-and-Carry, Phil Ruffin. So I guess Trump can legitimately claim to have been ahead of his time.

Penn hearts F'bleau. Well, sorta. Penn National Gaming has acknowledged that it's been sniffing around bankrupt Fontainebleau but cites several disincentives to a deal. Penn's CFO even called F'bleau worthless (and few in town would give him an argument at this point). Penn's publicly stated criteria for a Las Vegas acquisition have included that it be affordable and unencumbered. F'bleau is neither. So if Penn can't make liens and litigants go away, perhaps it can trash-talk F'bleau's price down so far that completion-related headaches become grudgingly acceptable.

From the mailbag #7

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:47:00 -0700

Presumably foiled once again by the Comment-Eating Server, reader kerr_mudgeon writes:

From the article about the A.C. contract settlement: "In his praise of the deal, Don Marrandino, the Eastern Division president of Harrah's, appeared to refer indirectly to tortured negotiations with the United Auto Workers involving dealers, which have degenerated into a costly, bitter fight that is scaring away customers.

Two and a half years after the union won representation elections at four Atlantic City casinos, it has yet to sign a contract with any of them.
"Harrah's is proud of its record as a responsible union partner as further evidenced by this contract which was developed and agreed to in just a few short weeks and without disruption to the business and employees," he said."

- Is Harrah's equally proud that, after 2 1/2 years, it can't negotiate a first contract with the other union?
~~~
As for the hotels' prices for sheets, towels, etc., other posters' comments are correct: these are long-standing inflated charges intended to deter theft by room guests - and yes, I read of cases where guests stole the (unusable) TV remotes... and even the pictures on the walls.*

(By the way, I bought a $10 3-cup coffee maker at Walgreen's Drugstore, downtown LV, on my last trip to use in my room; I'll buy another next trip.)
There is a new revenue stream that David alludes to: High-end resorts selling robes, mattresses, wine glasses, etc. to hotel guests who appreciate the supposed superior quality of those goods - and are willing to pay inflated prices to own them.

* -- Editor's note: The pictures in the hotel rooms at Casino X were the only things looked to be worth stealing -- but they weren't for sale.

Give that man a blue ribbon: State Senate President David Williams of Kentucky may not be a friend of racinos but he hit the nail on the head recently. In a multi-point statement outlining his opposition to slots at Bluegrass State tracks, he said that horseracing was beset by "endemic" problems. He's the first public official that S&G can recall stating an overdue truth: that the ailments afflicting the horsey set can be temporarily soothed by slot revenues, but not cured.

Quote of the Day

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:12:00 -0700

"With his ruddy nose, droopy eyes and imposing belly, the mayor might not be much of a looker, but the middle-aged woman behind the counter blushes, and tattooed men jump up from their brown leather armchairs and grin like schoolboys. 'Hey Oscar,' yells one of them. 'Where’s your martini? Where are the showgirls?'" -- from a Times Online profile of Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and his impolitic utterances. Goodman is about to make his first-ever visit to London. Those Brits won't know what hit them.

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.

From the mailbag #5: Vegas Club, football, Atlantic CIty

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:07:00 -0700

Reader herbop reports on the latest thrift move by Tamares Group: "While other Downtown hotels are installing in-room safes, and removing complaint-causing daily fees for same, the Vegas Club Hotel has pulled out the installed safes from its rooms. When I inquired, they said it's 'policy.' Guests can still use the casino's safe deposit boxes.

"They left the four bolt-holes in the wall, unpatched. Classy, right?"

Geez, I hope those German G2E attendees opted for the Plaza over the Vegas Club. Nice work, Tamares. Why don't you strip the copper out of the place and sell it on the black market while you're at it? (Whoops, we probably shouldn't give Pojo Z. and his flunkies any ideas.)

Kickoff time. Since NFL season finally draws nigh (after what seems like five months of preseason games), it's probably worth mentioning LVA Sports. It includes a directory of football contests, pigskin parties and team bars in the Vegas area. There are no fewer than 12 watering holes allied to Da Bears but only half that number for Packer Backers.

Tennessee Titans fans will just have to drink their beer at home, because our staff couldn't locate any Titan-affiliated bars. Ditto Tilman Fertitta's Houston Texans. Even the ever-putrid Oakland Raiders have three bars to their credit -- but getting to last year's Super Bowl still only netted one Vegas hangout for Arizona Cardinals fans. Go figure.

Don't pop the champagne for stalled Boardwalk resort Revel just yet. The latter has issued a clarification stating that China Construction Engineering Corp. only has a potential agreement in place to finish Revel, for which the resort must drum up funding later this year. Also, yesterday I misstated the opening date as "July 11" when I meant to type "July 2011." I regret the error.

Green $hoots?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:22:00 -0700

There's nothing like the approach of 2010's Global Gaming Expo to make Las Vegas hoteliers rethink their rates. For instance, if you want to stay at that palace of pleasure and plushness, the Plaza downtown, it'll run you $55 a night. Even the somewhat seedier Vegas Club will set you back $52/night.

Elsewhere in downtown, troubled Binion's may not be able to pay its landlords, but that's not stopping it from charging $172.62 during G2E Week. Even the clown house is cheaper: $142 gets you a Circus Circus room. That's a bargain when you consider that Stratosphere wants $164 per night.

As for the dubious privilege of hanging your hat at Imperial Palace, that'll cost you $189, bub. But the nerviest of the bottom feeders has to be Hooters. As of Sept. 4, it wasn't blushing to demand $192 per evening. Trust me when I say Hooters ought to pay you to stay there.

Then again ... I know of someone who got six nights at Imperial Palace -- during New Year's Eve -- for $16.65/night. So, rumors of Las Vegas' imminent recovery are probably premature.

'Peepshow''s little Hitler problem

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:20:00 -0700

Congratulations (not!) to the producers of Peepshow, whose rent-a-headliner stratagem has finally blown up in their faces. They're replacing a Jew (Shoshana Bean) with a fan of the leadership abilities of -- I kid you not -- Adolf Hitler. Oh, and she's a googly-eyed admirer of Fidel Castro, who -- among other offenses against humanity -- ran the casino industry out of Cuba.

Of course, this town has a tycoon or two known for cozying up to the authoritarian regime of Singapore and the downright despotic one in Peking. So perhaps Ms. O'Day's pathetic excuse for a brain will just be a 48-hour story ... but that's what we thought about Sen. John Ensign's escapades, at least until Mike Ensign's role as payola daddy came into play.

(Thanks to Richard Abowitz for the heads-up on this one.)

A reader informs me that the site LasVegasDowntownNews.com appears to be defunct. I couldn't get it to load either and blogger Jeff Burbank's output was sporadic at the best of times. Has this site gone the way of all flesh? If anybody has the skinny on this, please let S&G know.

"Oh shit!" headline of the day: Seen at Huffington Post, "Harry Reid to take the wheel on health care." That's like finding out the one family member who's certifiably incapable of navigating the driveway is going to pilot the family car up Mount Charleston.

From the mailbag #3

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:04:00 -0700

Reader Kerr_Mudgeon writes, re the case of a Columbia Sussex executive who was the victim of age discrimination:

She was 67 years old, for gosh sake! She should have taken her token (socialist) Social Security checks and gone on (fascist) Medicare, then waited for the inevitable pounding on her door by a (union) thug from (communist) ACORN who insisted on reading her (nonexistent) rights from the Death Book prior to making an appointment for her to stand before the (mandatory) Death Panel which would have assigned her to the most efficient (statist) queue for her to Take The Pill in order to eliminate Obama's $multi-trillion budget deficit - even though he's intentionally destroying the US economy in order to make himself Dictator of the World because he hates everybody and everything that is good = American (of which he is not one). As a matter of fact, if Jesus's will were in effect in this wicked world, she would not have been able to file her vicious law suit, because Tort Reform would have stopped any shady Trial Lawyers from taking her frivolous case!!!

Reader Jinx asks if I really thought X Burlesque was "awful." No, "awful" would be Anthony Cools' Ooh-la-la, thankfully deceased, although Cools threatens periodically to bring it back somewhere else (read: Tropicana). However, the only specifics I can remember of X were that it was hosted by the late Pudgy on the night I saw it and that the dancers were some of the most "augmented" I've seen on the Strip. At least Crazy Girls has two or three memorable numbers and a comfier showroom.

"Tired and boring," though, is the perfect description of Crazy Horse Paris. It's a depersonalization of the female form, like getting trapped in a Helmut Newton photo album. I don't think the astrology segment is in there anymore or, if it is, it's become thoroughly forgettable.

Thanks to reader Jeff in OKC for his shout-out to one of the truly great ladies of the silver screen, Stella Stevens. They don't make dames like her anymore (Christina Hendricks of Mad Men excepted) and, for your pleasure, here's the opening of Las Vegas Lady -- a festival of vintage Glitter Gulch neon.

Reality check

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:10:00 -0700

It's sackcloth-and-ashes time at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which ran another "The end is nigh" story about falling gambling revenues. (The Aliante Station Effect appears to have petered out in North Las Vegas.)

Yes, we're all the way down, down, down ... to 2004 levels. If we take the Wayback Machine five years into the past, we find the Nevada Gaming Control Board reporting a 6% increase in revenue from June 2003. And June '04 was an "off" month for a year that was distinguished by double-digit growth in casino revenue.

Aliante Station: played out?

That same August, the cost of the MGM Mirage takeover of Mandalay Resort Group inched past the $8 billion mark. "[B]ut Wall Street analysts ... said the merger still makes sense for investors and the combined company," wrote the R-J's Rod Smith. Weeks earlier, regulators signed off on the $1.3 billion Boyd Gaming/Coast Casinos merger; Station Casinos, Las Vegas Sands and MGM were all recording record-setting financial performances, and Harrah's Entertainment was girding itself for the conquest of Caesars Entertainment. Heck, the industry was feeling sufficiently bullish to absorb a 0.5% hike in the privilege tax. Read one headline, "State gaming revenue on a roll."

Had the industry lived within its means, today's narrative would be quite different. The Las Vegas Sun helpfully charts the inflation and collapse of the casino bubble, which lasted a good three years, peaking in October '07.

Unfortunately, when what went up eventually had to come down, some companies discovered themselves overexposed and with no margin for error. The likeliest victims, though, are the marginal, standalone properties which might find themselves squeezed out of existence as aggressive discounting by MGM and Harrah's brings quality Strip hotel rooms into the "affordable" realm (Or, as Phil Satre puts it, when the A-level product is priced below the B-level product.)

Valuable perspective is to be had by reading (or watching) this roundtable discussion with three men who dominated much of the gaming industry in the Nineties and early into the new century. Ex-Harrah's CEO Satre has earned the right to be a Monday morning QB. After all, he never did anything so stupid as strapping $30 billion in debt onto his company's back.

Former Station CFO Glenn Christenson seems deeply in denial at many points, though even he concedes, "It wasn’t so long ago that we hated conventions as an industry and now it’s critical to our operations. We’re severely damaged by that loss." But ex-Boyd prexy Don Snyder nails it when he describes "a false sense of security" pervading the industry, adding "I think we all got caught up in that."

2004, meet 2009, where "up" is the new "down."

A reader responds

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:11:00 -0700

"I'm conflicted: The Vegas Club casino is at least trying different stuff to drive business: Mechanical bull; 'Fetish pit;' Video blackjack; Internet access; Upgraded dining areas; Lobster catch machine, etc. ...

"But: I wasn't interested in the fetish pit -- I can't trust my back & heart to the bull -- the Internet access costs too much for what you get -- I want the snack bar &/or the coffee shop back, since I'm NOT a gourmand -- I don't play blackjack anymore since I discovered video poker -- and the lobster machine has no place in a casino + it's cruel.

"Far as I'm concerned, they should take care of the hotel. I've stayed there a number of times over the years, and the facility & service have continued to decline, year by year, under Tamares. (I come back sometimes because they comp me free hotel stays and $ cash payments @ check-in.)

"Overall, I think they'd do better to invest their money in routine maintenance + upgrades as needed to the LV Club & Plaza ... and start paying attention to the low morale of their employees."

[Bobby Ray Harris, are you listening?]

Tamares' animal cruelty

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:45:00 -0700

Man about town Steve Friess has all the gory details, plus video:

Now that new owners have actually made the ex-Tamares Group dump the Gold Spike actually rather spiffy and friendly, the Vegas Club now takes the wilted palm of being Downtown's most depressing casino. It's a no-frills, charmless grind joint, utterly devoid of atmosphere. Casino play, even on a Friday night, was desultory, as though the customers were so despairing they didn't care where they played.

The much-hyped "fetish" pit is a joke. It's tamer than any Britney Spears video and the costumes look like they were bought at a Halloween store. It's cheap -- and not in a good way. The wife-beater-wearing female dealers at the Gold Spike are much, much sexier ... some of the hottest in Vegas, if that's your thing.

The sports book, once the pride of the Vegas Club, has been turned into a pretty spacious showroom, but that's about the nicest thing you can say for the place. Downtown needs entrepreneurs but Tamares is content to be a slumlord.

Comedy Quest

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:26:00 -0700

Having made the rounds of a few laugh lounges lately, I can report that L.A. Comedy Club is not to be sneezed at, especially in its new digs at the Four Queens. However, Tickled Pink, at Planet Hollywood, is one of the more remarkable value propositions in town. Hower, Sin City Comedy Show (not reviewed), also at Planet Ho, manages to be both overpriced and mediocre, and the layout of the room is terrible.

Stanley Ho, ailing monarch

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:02:00 -0700

Not many of us make headlines by waking up in the morning and saying something. But when the future of over 50% of Macao's casino market hinges on A) your health and B) your plan of succession, and C) your name is Stanley Ho ... well, it's a big deal. Macau Daily Times is reporting that the elderly Ho is both conscious and articulate. However, it's also saying that he needs further surgery to extricate blood clots from his brain. My suspicion that the gambling oligarch suffered a stroke (or something very close thereto) and not a simple slip-and-fall -- was first reported -- is hardly dispelled by this latest news.

For reasons I was in the midst of outlining last Friday, just before the Big Computer Freeze destroyed it all, we're far from out of the woods on this. Also, the gathering of family members around the patriarch's sickbed is -- due to various business agendas -- somewhere between courtiers hovering around an ailing monarch and vultures circling potential prey.

Alas, all that must go onto the back burner until I deal with some outstanding business that includes reviewing L.A. Comedy Club at the Four Queens and Tickled Pink at Planet Hollywood. We had some extra time before the latter last night to contemplate CityCenter. Whether one likes it or not, it's going to make several nearby properties -- I'm looking at you Monte Carlo and especially New York-New York -- look very antiquated, bordering on tacky. With a few exceptions, the Wynn-initation themed resorts are proving to have surprisingly short shelf lives.

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?

Quote of the Day

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:08:00 -0700

"Privé. Gibbons. Ensign. Rampant foreclosure. Half-built, hubristic casinos. Record unemployment. UFC. Mob Museum. Maybe Las Vegas 2009 is just Tom Wolfe's next novel." -- Las Vegas Weekly Editor Scott Dickensheets, from Facebook.

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.

Double-whammy for Planet Ho

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:36:00 -0700

True, Planet Hollywood is feeling some pain in the wallet after the Nevada Gaming Commission approved a $500,000 fine. But it's Clark County Department of Business License which fired the shot across the bow that will really get the casino industry's attention. By scotching the liquor licenses of both Planet Ho's Privé and Living Room clubs, it signed their death warrant. That, more than anything, ought to get scofflaw club owners and laissez-faire casino owners to clean up their act.

It's hardly an excessive move when you consider that the bill of particulars against Planet Ho's clubs included "drug use, prostitution, underage drinking and assault." Besides, if you want those things, perhaps you should patronize one of Las Vegas' many "gentlemen's clubs." Nevada regulators' concern about on-Strip prostitution is laudable, if tardy. When it was rampant at the Tropicana, gaming's policemen snoozed at their posts, otherwise known as "monitoring the situation."

If the message still hasn't sunk in, the Nevada Gaming Control Board's Randall Sayre sent out an "invitation" for casino executives and middle management to discuss a wide range of potential concerns. Gov. Jim Gibbons appointed Sayre to the NGCB with a mandate to beef up its law-enforcement role and Sayre's made good on it. (Even Midnight Jim has his moments of perspicacity.) It's good to see the spirit of Bobby Siller living on in Carson City.

"Damn those customers!" What do you do when business takes a not-unpredictable nosedive during a recession? Blame the customers, of course. At least, if you're Golden Nugget owner Tilman Fertitta, that's what you do. When times were good, Fertitta was bullish on gaming (which was essentially propping up his Landry's Restaurants empire).

Oh, what transformation a few bad quarters brings! Moans the Texas tycoon, “I feel very good about restaurant hospitality, I do not feel very good about gaming.” Hmmm, maybe you should have pondered that change of heart when you were proceeding with a new $150 million hotel tower (opening ~~Aug. 1~~ Nov. 20) in the teeth of an economic tailspin?

As for the patrons, "discounted room rates appear to have attracted a clientele who are spending less on gaming and other amenities," harrumphs a company document. Yes, because in case you haven't noticed, we're on the verge of a depression. People have less money to spend. Period. Like many others like him, Fertitta needs to get hip to the fact that we're entering a period of diminished expectations. Shaking your fist at the rain isn't going to accomplish anything.

Other Fertitta scapegoats include MGM Mirage, for having the audacity to discount its rooms during the downturn. Sounding rather whiny, Fertitta utters, “You ought to go online and look at some of these rates and packages you can get. That is where we are just being murdered, trying to be competitive with the MGM and the Bellagio.”

Welcome to the NFL, man. And if you think -- with all due respect to the downtown Nugget -- that you're in the running against Bellagio or even the Green Monster, well, you're in a world of denial. I've not had time to read the last Landry's quarterly filing but, for once, it sounds like a real page-turner.

Station wins one, albeit on a technicality. All parties involved will be back for a grudge match in local court.

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:

Signs of the Times

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:27:00 -0700

Caesars Palace's jumbotron was hawking a poker "tournement [sic]" as of last night. Having an ex-Harvard boffin at the helm evidently doesn't raise a company's I.Q. level. You half-expect that sort of spelling gaffe on the marquee at Terrible's; at Caesars, not so much.

It was wall-to-wall people at the Golden Nugget last night. Which goes to show that a scarifyingly depopulated Riviera on Monday night was not indicative of some citywide malaise. (What it bodes for the Riv is less than reassuring, however.) Nugget owner Tilman Fertitta is really packing them in -- at least in terms of bodies, if not dollars -- particularly the retirees. If Anthony Newley shout-outs are your thing, you'll love headliner Gordie Brown.

Thumbs down, however, to some price-gouging we encountered at The Grille, the Nugget's fast-food joint. Two bucks gets you a soda -- in a thimble. And don't be goin' askin' fer no refills, buckaroo, 'cause they're ain't none. Just skedaddle now afore somebody takes a brandin' iron to yer hide, tenderfoot.

Vegas (isn't the only place that) needs Carmen Electra

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:51:00 -0700

Occasionally, S&G readers allow me to share their off-list bon mots with the general public. Such is the case with one Pacific Rim-based gentlewoman who's familiar with the sights and sounds of Macao. Evidently, it's a place where voluptuousness is craved all the more for being in short supply. Hence, the gyrations of a certain Carmen Electra at Crazy Horse Paris prompted this sage observation:

"Macau sure could do with some of this type of sizzle"

No doubt ... but we need Ms. Electra here. (And aren't you gents glad S&G was given a non-gratutious rationale to post yet another photo of Carmen?)

On a serious note, the Electra guest gig stirred up local media "buzz" far out of proportion to its duration. In terms of oomph for the buck, it's given the Holly Madison push at Planet Hollywood a serious run for its money: more evidence that stars are born, not fabricated. Whatever one thinks of Ms. Electra's troubled personal life, she's a "stage creature" and Vegas could use a few more right now.

Supporting the troops. Big ups to the El Cortez for giving $15 dining credits to active-duty servicemen (and women) at its Café Cortez and Flame steakhouse. Our military is grossly underpaid for guarding our liberties (such as appreciating Carmen Electra), so anything the casino industry does by way of a "thank you" deserves S&G's salute.

If you're in the Reno area and are an aficianado of the stellar cable TV service known as Cinemax, I consider it my civic duty to alert you to the following fact: Monique Parent (aka "The Thinking Man's Sex Symbol") will be spokesmodeling -- or something of that ilk -- at a Reno-area Costco next week.

Among the prolific Parent's many titles is the Citizen Kane of erotic films, Play Time ... or so they tell me. <cough> So if you've admired Ms. Parent's fine, wry thesping in Dark Secrets or The Key to Sex, stop by and show your gratitude.

Just a suggestion.

Case Bets: F'bleau, Adelson, Oscar

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:03:00 -0700

Whether it's the banks or the subcontractors, somebody's going to take a big screwing at Fontainebleau. That's the nub of a new lawsuit, whereby developer Jeffrey Soffer asserts that Turnberry West Construction (which he also owns) has superior repayment rights to those of the project's backers.

I believe this is called, "One hand washes the other." However, the legal issues involved make fascinating reading. Some new-to-Vegas casino developers have screwed the pooch and eventually come out smelling like roses (Sheldon Adelson, for one). I don't Soffer's going to make into that elite club. And you can forget about Big Bleau opening before July 1, 2010, at the very least.

Speaking of Sheldon ... results at his new Sands Bethlehem continue to disappoint. Adelson's tradition of half-assing his casino openings, dribbling the product onto the market, may finally be catching up with him. Marina Bay Sands should be the acid test of this managerial style. (Personally, I believe it's going to be Adelson's Waterloo, at least to the extent that the casino is expected to drive everything else.)

Sands Macao: Sheldon's best bet

Ironically, it was the comparatively "quick and dirty" Sands Macao, built for considerably less than any other Adelson casino, that has been his biggest hit. The cost-to-date of Sands Bethlehem, by the way, has been revised downward to $675 million (from $743 million), which ought to help the ROI numbers. However, early predictions that Sands Bethelehem was going to siphon business from the Philadelphia area were clearly unrealistic and should have been reported with greater skepticism.

Berzon: caped crusader

Truth, justice and the American way have one less champion in the Las Vegas area now that Pulitzer Prize-winning Alexandra Berzon has been hired by the Wall Street Journal. Good for Berzon, better still for the WSJ. But who will keep a gimlet eye on OSHA enforcement and the CityCenter clusterfuck now? (And she was moving into gaming coverage, too ... the prospect of a Berzon/Liz Benston/Rick Velotta trifecta would have dwarfed all other casino reportage in this burg.) With the loss of Berzon and editor Drex Heikes, the Las Vegas Sun is suddenly in a world of hurt.

Oscar gets whacked. Somebody's fantasy, anyway. (Were there any thumbless graffiti taggers in the house? Homeless advocates? Civil libertarians?) Hizzoner was the celeb-victim at the reopening of Marriage Can Be Murder in its new digs at Fitzgeralds. MCBM recently left the Four Queens and a good move it was, seeing as the 4Q is at risk of being evicted. Movie veteran Goodman (Casino) evidently forgot whatever he learned from The Master (aka Martin Scorcese) and didn't hit his "mark."

As for MCBM, a dinner-theatre show, I can't say it compared favorably with the ones we did at Grinnell Community Theater. I was the "juvenile lead" in several shows there and humbly submit that our gung-ho amateur troupe could have done better. Hey, we "killed" with Ten Nights in a Barroom. That thing could have run for six months, easily.

Case Bets: Midnight Jim, Sands, "Peepshow", Hard Rock, Reid

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:50:00 -0700

Chronic ineptitude by Nevada's governor is endless fodder for comedy (like entrusting your re-election campaign to the former marketing director of a ski resort and political novice.)

But it also has perilous consequences. For instance, his thoughtless decision to pack the Nevada Gaming Commission with lawyers now threatens to hamstring the board. Jane Ann Morrison details how new Commissioner Joe Brown had to abstain from 24% of last month's votes. Seems he had conflict-of-interest issues with a couple of miniscule slot houses called Station Casinos and Harrah's Entertainment. Whoops. Brown's is the most egregious problem but it's hardly the only one.

Most of Jim Gibbons' appointments to the NGC and the Nevada Gaming Control Board have been solid but this was a real boner and somebody up in Carson City should have seen it coming.

Midnight Jim discovers Facebook. He also learns the need to think before you "friend." He sure won't be getting Bill Raggio's vote next year.

Rescue may be at hand for the beautiful and historic Boulder Dam Hotel, thanks to a mysterious benefactor. As for recent arrival Shear Madness, not so much. I hear that the "interactive" show may not have been interactive enough to ride the Vegas wave of Marriage Can Be Murder and Tony 'n Tina's Wedding.

In case you missed it ... Apparently eager to stanch the flow of exiting executives, Las Vegas Sands has given Rob Golstein a promotion to senior VP. The new title comes with a $535,000 raise. For those of you keeping score at home, that's $2,758 for each of the 194 workers Sands just pink-slipped.

Bean out, O'Day in: The producers of Peepshow are, more than anything else, great at generating publicity. It's official that Shoshana Bean will be supplanted in late summer by Playboy cover girl Aubrey O'Day. It sounds as though Bean was plugged into the cast on very short notice (with seven days or fewer of rehearsal), lending credence to the reports that Mel B.'s disappearing act came as an unpleasant surprise to the erstwhile Scary Spice. At present, Bean is the best thing Peepshow has going. How unfortunate it was but a brief fling. Shoshana, we barely knew ya.

Rushing in where angels fear to tread, Morgans Hotel Group will open 490 more Hard Rock Hotel rooms on July 27, well ahead of schedule. The timing seems odd but Morgans and financier/hostage DLJ Merchant Partners have to make their rash of expansions at the HRH start turning a buck.

Reid safe at home. The window of opportunity for unseating Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is closing fast. Thanks to Reid's support of assault weapons, the National Rifle Association has got his back. Avowed challenged Sharron Angle is woefully short of cash, while GOP dream candidate Rep. Dean Heller has even less financial traction. If Reid's unpopularity with the home crowd makes him a low-hanging piñata, the GOP just keeps flailing at empty air.

Rough trade

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:09:00 -0700

May wasn't great for Las Vegas, to say the least, with hotel occupancy -6%, a figure somewhat amplified by the presence of 3% more hotel rooms. The local ADR of $96.96 would have been regarded as real money back in the day. Hoteliers now are more likely to look at it in the context of the -28% shift from last year's rates. More worrisome is that convention attendance (-33%) outslid the number of conventions held (-26%), whereas it used to be the reverse.

Indiana has absorbed the effect of its two new racinos. Casino revenues were flat in June, a decline at most boats offset by the extra dollars generated at Harrah's Entertainment's Horseshoe Hammond (+13.5%) and Boyd Gaming's Blue Chip (+4%), both of which recently expanded. Penn National was hurt by the switchover to Hollywood Casino Lawrenceberg, its new vessel, and Ameristar East Chicago (-15%) withered under the glare of Horseshoe Hammond.

Illinois is scraping along, having evidently struck bottom ... for now. Once the impact of a fire-closed Empress Joliet was backed out, Illinois was down a mere 3%. That's practically a moral victory. Of course, with the institution of slot routes en route and the Lege contemplating a huge casino expansion in the state, any celebration will be short-lived. Harrah's Joliet was the logical beneficiary of the Empress Joliet shutdown (+5%), while MGM Mirage's Grand Victoria spiraled -17%.

There were a few gainers, ranging from miniscule (Boyd's Par-A-Dice) to massive (+109% at independent Casino Rock Island). East St. Louis-based Casino Queen finally lost a significant chunk of business (-11.5%) to its augmented Missouri rivals, while Penn's Alton Belle kept its leakage to -3%.

It's not a free market. Lawmakers in the Land of Lincoln have not only introduced slot routes, they may add four more casino licenses to the state. Factor in Neil Bluhm's casino project in Des Plaines (license #10), and the gambling market in Illinois becomes seriously diluted. However, no compensatory tax reduction is on the table.

When it comes to casinos and taxes, solons think simply that more = more. However, in a state where competition is limited by statute, not only does guvmint control the levers of the market place it has an obligation to take the economic consequences of its actions into account. This is not being done and the repercussions are likely to be severe.

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: A.C. Trop, 21, Ensign, Boulder City, Jacko, etc.

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:45:00 -0700

After conservator Justice Gary Stein turned his trusteeship of the Tropicana Atlantic City into a $7.4 million gravy train, the New Jersey Casino Control Commission is belatedly bolting the barn door. It's going to petition the Lege to limit the ambit of future trustees, none of which would be necessary had the NJCCC not let Stein run amok in the first place.

The failings of his butterfingered stewardship have been rehearsed enough in this space. However, the Press of Atlantic City's story adds yet another incredulity-making touch. Stein, a former member of the New Jersey Supreme Court and with an entire law firm at his command, still had to rely upon legal opinions from the NJCCC's general counsel.

Lower bet limits are no bargain, the Las Vegas Sun finds. The Strip casino that has the stones to go back to 3:2 blackjack will become the hottest spot in town.

Who knew? Seems that Sen. John Ensign's curriculum vitae included a stint at the helm of the Gold Spike, one of downtown Vegas' seamiest casinos. Given the comparable seaminess of Ensign's ongoing scandal, perhaps it was a case of water seeking its own level. Las Vegas Gleaner reader "Goldy" puts the sordid mess in perspective: "... he didn't reveal the affair until the demands from the Hampton's [sic] (including Doug) became 'outragous.' [sic] That implies that prior demands were 'reasonable' and Doug was making them. ... he essentially was selling his willing wife, and Ensign was buying, until the number got too high. So, like most things, this entire deal was really just about the number." [emphasis added]

You can take Ensign out of the casino but you just can't take the casino out of Ensign.

A potential tragedy. Several weeks back, the Better Half and I spent a beautiful Sunday in Boulder City. The highlight of our visit was the Boulder Dam Hotel, where we enjoyed a splendid lunch and an eye-opening tour of a museum devoted to the history of Hoover Dam. (Suffice it to say that the people who built it endured privation that 21st century Americans would find unimaginable.) Sadly, we do not have the $60,000 that it's going to take to keep the Boulder Dam Hotel open. Please, philanthropic Nevadans, do not let this treasure go dark like ...

Nevada itself. Visitors to Gibbons-era Nevada are likely to find it closed. History? Books? Parks? Them's pansy egghead stuff fer Commie states like Kalifornia, doncha know? Gawta get me some more guns afore Harry Reid repeals the Decoration of Independence or whatever.

Speaking of museums ... could the untimely demise of Michael Jackson spell opportunity for mistake-prone Colony Capital? The casino owner has the opportunity to monetize its acquisition of Neverland Ranch as never before. Converting it to a tourist attraction rather than a (misguided?) real estate play seems a no-brainer.

A-Yem to the rescue

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:14:00 -0700

"No corporate liposuction." With those words, new Tropicana Las Vegas CEO Alex Yemenidjian not only coined the catchphrase of the year, he implicitly repudiated the policies of forerunner William J. Yung III, whose Columbia Sussex modus operandi was to solve all problems by sacking large numbers of employees, stripping out amenities, raising prices, slashing marketing and decimating advertising budgets. (A super-stupid policy, it turns out, as revenues and cash flow at at least three of four former Aztar Corp. casinos plummeted under Yung's reign of error.)

A-Yem's approval hearing with the Nevada Gaming Commisson was marred only by a senior moment from Commissioner John Moran Jr. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Moran "applauded Yemenidjian’s efforts and recalled playing golf at a course near the Tropicana, adding that he hopes new management will be able to return the property to its glory days."

WTF? Is Moran flashing back to the Tropicana golf course that used to be in back of the old Marina Hotel and was cannibalized by MGM Grand? Or maybe the Dunes Golf Course across the street? That was more than 10 years ago, dude, and what's it got to do with the price of tea in the Trop? Is he suggesting A-Yem put in some links? The only ones you could fit into the current Trop site are the putt-putt kind -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

Yemenidjian's $440 million debt-for-equity swap effectively reprices the Trop at $12.9 million/acre ... possibly even less depending on how great of a discount Onex Corp. obtained on that debt.

Kudos to NGC Chairman Peter Bernhard (pictured) for crafting a sensible solution to the problem of licensing Las Vegas Gaming CEO Jon Berkley. Both the new CEO and his company have been stumble-prone, so Bernhard's provisional one-year license is a prudent compromise, giving Berkley just enough rope to either hang himself or prove that he's the Mr. Fixit his lawyer says he is. As for Las Vegas Gaming, it's where your phone call rolls over when you dial up ...

... the Ensign scandal's casino connection. Over at the Las Vegas Gleaner, Hugh Jackson has unearthed "the forgotten Ensign," brother Bill, onetime COO of Nugget Gaming, a company with a remarkable development slate. When S&G rang up Nugget's executive offices on Ali Baba Lane, we got Las Vegas Gaming instead. Neither Bill Ensign nor Nugget CEO Stephen Crystal were to be found on the voice-mail directory either.

Crystal was the chief huckster for Barrick Gaming, an underfunded company that fronted Lichtenstein-based Tamares Group's stealthy acquisition of six downtown Las Vegas casinos, before vanishing in a cloud of insolvency. During my early months at the Las Vegas Business Press, I quickly learnt to take Crystal's public pronouncements cum grano salis. (Well, he was an ex-politician, after all.)

Helpfully, the Nugget Gaming site actually provides old news clippings that show just how hilariously full of it Crystal and front man D.W. Barrick were. A former colleague who had a ringside seat for Barrick Gaming's licensing told me that Nevada regulators were desperate and convinced themselves the (wholly unrelated) Barrick Gold Corp. fortune stood at Mr. Barrick's back. As the Barrick/Crystal house of cards was collapsing, I called Toronto-based Barrick Gold spokesman Vince Borg for comment. He'd never heard of Barrick Gaming. So much for that.

DINO? Not as in "Martin," sadly. Reporter Dennis Myers breaks down why casino executives and other bidness bigwigs are lining up behind Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). Yes, this is the same Reid the Las Vegas Review-Journal routinely and hysterically calls "socialist." Then again, the R-J thinks anybody to the left of Grover Norquist is a pinko.

Case Bets: Our LVA mascot; Menopause; Mob museum

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:19:00 -0700

Woe betide anyone who dares to plunder LVA HQ, for we are under the protection of a fierce -- but beautiful -- watch iguana. Mojo, as she is named, is at this moment sunning herself on the balcony of my office. The photo above shows Mojo in her customary habitat: a massive iguana "condo" that takes up nearly half of one of the downstairs offices.

As cushy as her lifestyle may be, Mojo occasionally gets cabin fever and either rampages around the research department or attacks her "evil twin" in the mirror. Watch your head if you're coming in the front door; Mojo recently leapt off the second-floor balcony in pursuit of (we presume) some fat, juicy pigeons and suffered no injury whatsoever. She's one tough little hombre.

Menopause The Musical: I don't mean it pejoratively when I say that if you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you'll like. Either you get the joke(s) or you don't. It's that simple.

Oscar Goodman's pet project, the so-called "Mob museum" just got whacked, albeit not fatally ... we think.

MGM: Deal or no deal?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:55:00 -0700

MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren is re-mulling asset sales of MGM Grand Detroit, Gold Strike (Tunica, Miss.) and Beau Rivage. But all Strip assets are definitively off the market (yes, even Slots A Fun). Since the Detroit and Tunica casinos are already encumbered with CityCenter-related debt, presumably Murren would transfer those mortgages to some or all of the "Mandalay mile." As far as I know, those three casinos are still unencumbered. The Detroit resort would be a real "trophy asset" for any potential buyer ... presuming that banks are more inclined to lend than they were(n't) the last time Murren shopped this trio around.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal took a good look at MGM's Giza deal -- and it's even better than initially thought. Not only will the company collect management and franchise fees, it also gets a cut of any profits. If there's a downside here, I'm too myopic to see it.

MGM wouldn't sell Monte Carlo when Jack Binion came calling. One presumes this had more to do with potentially being able to extend CityCenter into Monte Carlo, rather than Jack's money not being good enough for MGM. However, if the company really cares about the property, why are they slowly letting it go to seed? The Brew Pub will close on July 12.

Also ... our LVA research team has discovered that no further Lance Burton performances are scheduled. This seemingly writes finis to his long relationship with Monte Carlo. Is it just an expedient way to save money or was Burton's unpardonable sin to get very good reviews from the local dailies right after Criss F. Angel laid an $85 million egg with Believe? Burton out and Angel in? That's just not right.

"IUER"? WTF? Don't call Melco Crown International's new City of Dreams a "casino." Melcospeak for the new pleasure place is "integrated urban entertainment resort." At least Steve Wynn's "casino-based destination resort" coinage rolled off the tongue a little more felicitously. On second thought, just call it "a casino."

Holy cow! The husk of the late, lamented Holy Cow Brew Pub & Casino (home of the best beer in Las Vegas) is proposed for redevelopment -- again. It was briefly the site-to-be of the phantom Ivana condo tower, one of the more egregious examples of condo "vaporware" during the recent bubble. Arizona- and New Mexico-based developers intend to tip the old Cow and replace her with a low-rise, low-cost (no hotel) casino.

The Strip needs some fresh mid-market casinos and this one could be it. But why make your anchor tenant a Walgreens when it's the flagship retailer ... of Palazzo. We sure could use the jobs, too, what with unemployment hitting record levels in Nevada. A good thing that Gov. Jim Gibbons was shamed into accepting federal funding for the jobless.

No Surprise Dept.: So the Moulin Rouge is (literally) toast and arson is suspected. The fire happened the day after a bankruptcy auction found no takers for the property.

Obama backpedals (sidepedals?) on gay rights. If he wants to give the country change it can believe in, how about revoking the profoundly un-American policy of throwing our LGBT brothers and sisters out of the military? If they've volunteered to lay down their lives for Old Glory, they're better people than me. And if Harry Truman is remembered for nothing else, he'll always be the president who integrated the military with a stroke of a pen. Does President Obama have Truman-like intenstinal fortitude?

One of the vilest of major-league baseball players back in the Eighties was slow-moving, philandering, showboating slugger Mel Hall. But we never knew just how loathsome he was. Good luck in the slammer, Mel.

Loveman in denial

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:36:00 -0700

Harrah's Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman continues his media-availability tour. In today's installment, he grants an audience to the Las Vegas Business Press and insists that not only is everything as right as rain at Harrah's but that the LBO he steered the company into is really "an ability to focus on long-term viability and the health of the business." (Bond analysts remain skeptical.)

Despite bragging on the vast "resources and ... expertise" (like these?) of Apollo Management and TPG Capital, Loveman doesn't have any new strategems or projects to offer. The overwhelming consensus of stock analysts and customers nowadays is that Less = Less at a Harrah's-owned property. Meanwhile, the debtholders who bankrolled the buyout are asked to take haircut after haircut, and could be forgiven for thinking they've been played for suckers. Is anybody benefiting from this deal? Oh, I forgot.

One could go on but the story's mostly a rehash of old Loveman platitudes, plus another refrain of "We Love Macao." Harrah's management has been warbling that tune incessantly of late -- so much so that it sounds like an overt courtship of Pansy Ho, should she and MGM Mirage get a divorce.

The most newsworthy aspect of the story is the accompanying photo, in which the former Harvard prof appears to gotten a deep chestnut-brown dye job. If indeed that's the case, Loveman should ask for his money back: It's not only undignified, it's inept.

Gordie Brown goes down: If you think Loveman gets a bad review, you should read about the Golden Nugget's star attraction, who inhabits "a place where pop culture pressed 'pause' at about the time of 'Achy Breaky Heart,' Hootie & the Blowfish and Forrest Gump."

Then again, there must be people who groove to Hervé Villechaize jokes. Trouble is, they're all going to be down at the Riviera, watching Charo. And when you're described as a poor man's Danny Gans ... well, do the blows land any lower than that?

Great news for slot players: Seven more years of Clue and Battleship. Give Hasbro credit for knowing a good thing (in this case, its alliance with WMS Gaming) when it saw it. And, just because we can't say it enough, WMS' Star Trek machines are the cat's pajamas. Just for the record, you know.

Quote of the Day

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:08:00 -0700

“We understand the economy has had a severe impact on the gaming industry. The [casino] companies have asked for temporary economic relief. And we’re asking for a variety of things too. Whether the two minds meet, we’ll see. But we’re not there yet.” -- Culinary Union boss D. Taylor on Strip and downtown operators' request for postponement of raises that are part of the current collective bargaining agreement. I think we all knew this moment was coming and it was only a question of when and how much.

Photo © Sparky Goldstein

Quote of the Day

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:18:00 -0700

"From a purely employment standpoint, I think we are already in overcorrection territory. How long can you sustain that lower standard of employment before you really start to impact customer service?" -- Jeremy Aguero of Applied Analysis, pointing out that Las Vegas is at its lowest workers/hotel rooms ratio ever recorded and is in danger of repelling visitation.

Planet Ho Towers peep show

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:42:00 -0700

As for Nov. 1, PH Towers -- the Westgate condo component of Planet Hollywood -- will be open for business. Time constraints preclude creating an entire photo gallery, so I'll just direct you here. (Be warned that there's some damned annoying "house" music that you'll probably want to mute.)

If the photos are a reliable guide, some of the units look a mite cramped. Then again, when you're paying for a lot of high-end fixtures and furnishings, it feels like a waste of money not to be spending as much time in your room as possible. We've come a long way from the days when then-Imperial Palace owner Ralph Engelstad forbade bathtubs in his hotel rooms for fear guests would spend more time soaking than getting soaked.

Hunter S. Thompson: The Game. Human imagination doth run riot in a new parlor game. Your grandmother's Parchesi set never looked like this. I'm not sure why you'd buy this $3,500 placebo in lieu of taking a Vegas vacation with the same dinero but give the creators high scores for creativity.

Sweat, the final frontier: Embattled Neonopolis supremo Rohit Joshi may have principle on his side but when your adversary is perspiration, principle has to take a back seat. In hindsight, it's a good thing the reopening of Star Trek: The Experience got pushed back a year. Who wants to look at Trek artifacts in a Borg-like steambath?

Quote of the Day

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:56:00 -0700

"The surroundings and clientele here are just too rough. (Ironic, but true: The first two letters on the Western marquee are burned out, so it simply reads, 'STERN.' It's an apt description." -- description of an aborted fact-finding mission to the Western Hotel, from the latest issue of Las Vegas Advisor. So much for those reports of an improved, more respectable Western.

Slots A Fun defeats Donald Trump

Fri, 22 May 2009 14:08:00 -0700

I'm not sure if you can see the "unique page views" counter on this blog or not but, as of Friday afternoon, people prefer to read about Slots A Fun than about the bizarre reasoning patterns of one Donald J. Trump, 208 to 148. If that were an election, Trump would be losing by a double-digit margin. It's Slots A Fun in a landslide!

It's worse still if you're CityCenter's Aria and Vdara hotels because you're getting crushed -- crushed! -- by the Cabana Suites at the El Cortez. By an over two-to-one margin (1,537 vs. 755) people would rather look at hotel-room photos of "the El."

It gets better. In his Los Angeles Times blog, Richard Abowitz pronounces the Cabana Suites, "the nicest rooms in downtown Vegas, even nicer than the ones I've seen at the Golden Nugget ... a new alternative that allows you to see the the dirty urban origins of Vegas without having to take a cut in the contemporary Vegas luxury experience."

Somebody better hide that copy from tempestuous Nugget owner Tilman Fertitta. He's not going to "friend" Abowitz after he reads it.

Quote of the Day

Wed, 13 May 2009 12:31:00 -0700

"We don't see them getting worse. The problem is we don't see them getting better." -- Boyd Gaming CEO Keith Smith on 2009-10 tourism statistics for Las Vegas.

Quote of the Day

Fri, 08 May 2009 17:25:00 -0700

"The caller instructed me to look out the window and across the street.

"I replied that our building has no external windows ..." -- metaphorical explanation for the insular worldview of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, provided by Editor Thomas Mitchell in the course of arguing with a firefighter while the Moulin Rouge burned.

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.

Station ixnays expansions

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:08:00 -0700

Stick a fork in Castaways Station -- the forlorn patch of Fremont Street land is on the block ... albeit at a considerable markup. Station Casinos, according to The Associated Press, is asking for $39.5 million on a vacant 30-acre lot for which it paid $33.7 million in late 2004. Good luck finding any takers.

Castaways Station, we never knew ye.

The '04 transaction illustrates Station's profilgate tendencies. Not only did it pay a markup of $900,000 on the Castaways' market value, Station graced the owners of the Longhorn and Bighorn casinos with $12 million more to in walking-away money. After that, Station imploded the rickety old casino, commissioned a rendering of a new, $90 million replacement from local architect Ed Vance and made cryptic noises about redeveloping the site at some unspecified future date. When I asked Las Vegas City Councilman Gary Reese (in whose district the ex-Castaways sits) about the status of "Castaways Station," the company became incredibly umbrageous and all "How dare you?"

In addition to the Castaways site, which Station appears to have grabbed mainly to keep it away from anybody else, ~~two~~ four additional plots are on the market. These ~~are~~ include an eight-acre chunk near Boulder Station and nearly five acres next to Sunset Station. This removes any doubt as to why Station keeps dickering for extensions with its bondholders: It's trying to raise cash ASAP so it can outbid the $950 million hostile-takeover offer that Boyd Gaming's got on the table.

(Click here for previews of Station's big land auction, including sites at the Ann Road/Sloan Land and Sunset & Lindell roads intersections. If the Castaways parcel also includes parking lots that previous owners leased from Jackie Gaughan, that may well rationalize the price increase.)

On the subject of high-speed rail, if you're a skeptic or simply doubt that it's a panacea for choked highways to and from Las Vegas, you'll find some comfort here. Though the writer makes some thought-provoking, however, seems of the opinion that we should do nothing, so I invite him to spend a Sunday in bumper-to-bumper I-15 traffic, heading back into California one inch at a time.

One reader suggests a solution in the form of a drastic increase in high-end buses serving the SoCal-LV corridor. Assuming that's feasible, would you make use of it? (It could do wonders for the rental-car business at either end of the trip.)

First, some good news

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:19:00 -0700

In a refreshing change of pace comes news of a casino that's on schedule for its opening. OK, so it's in Dodge City, Kansas, but we'll take good news wherever we can get it these days. Whoever thought avionics firm Butler National would be the sole casino bidder to make good on its Sunflower State commitment?

How quickly we forget that the original plans for Red Rock Resort called for three condo-hotel towers. Station Casinos was feeling its oats back then, thinking big even as it projected only single-digit ROI at Red Rock as far out as 2011 or longer. Overconfident much?

They like us. They really, really like us. Casinos in Southern Nevada feeling the recession's pinch are suddenly overflowing with newfound lurve for area customers, long taken for granted. Here's what's on offer so far. Satellites like Primm and Mesquite weren't any great shakes during Vegas' halcyon years. Why you'd go out there now when oligopolists Herbst Gaming and Black Gaming have helped run their respective markets into the ground is difficult to fathom. (Primm, at least, has a good outlet mall. Mesquite ... not so much.) Oh, and what's wrong with this "Stay and Play Here" graphic?

Goodman one-ups Adelson. Although he's never exuded warm fuzzies toward the Culinary Union, neither has -- to my knowledge -- Sheldon Adelson called his longtime adversary "evil." So Mayor Oscar Goodman stepped into the breach -- or stepped in something. As for the Culinary, it's got much bigger problems to worry about.

Any company that planned an ultra-high-end Elvis Presley-themed resort (a conceptual disconnect if ever I heard one) doesn't have both oars in the water. This one doesn't have money in the bank, either, and may soon have its Strip parcel sold right out from under it.

Las Vegas' best low-cost attraction is on the move, down the road to 1610 E. Tropicana Ave. If there's a guest list for the grand reopening, Elton John isn't on it.

Quote of the Day

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:54:00 -0700

"I say I would greet him if he would rectify the record. I think he owes it to us, and I say that respectfully, to say Las Vegas is a great place to come and do business.” -- Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, outlining preconditions under which would deign to receive the President of the United States.

'Golden' customer service

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:16:00 -0700

Kudos to Mark Brandenburg, the managing partner of the Golden Gate. His frequent on-site presence and accessibility to guests really brightened the experience of some recent Vegas visitors. They'd had multiple bad experiences at Binion's Gambling Hall and the Four Queens. (So much for the new service ethic that Terry Caudill supposedly brought when he purchased those Downtown institutions.) By contrast, their stay at the Gate was distinguished by good customer service, and by Brandenburg's gracious and good-humored interventions on their behalf.

They also give the Gate praise for its ginormous Cobb salad -- haven't tried it myself, but maybe I should -- among other gustatory pleasures. (Could it be bigger than the Peppermill's banana split? That thing's the size of Palazzo.) There was less praise for other Downtown casino restaurants, including one that served what is described as shoe leather masquerading as fish.

Back when I profiled it for Casino Executive Magazine (R.I.P.), the Golden Gate was by far the most charming of the Downtown casinos. I'm glad to hear that, in this age of mega- and meta-, the "small is beautiful" mindset is still paying dividends. If you want to see "old" Vegas in the truest and best sense of the term, it's the place to go.

Quote of the Day

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:44:00 -0700

"The point of convergence is the obligatory version of Louis Armstrong singing 'What A Wonderful World,' apparently required for an impressionist to obtain a Clark County business license." -- Mike Weatherford on the common denominator between Danny F. Gans, Terry Fator and "Downtown" Gordie Brown. I was offered free Brown tickets but couldn't pass up the chance to rearrange my sock hamper or maybe even watch some paint dry (literally ... the drywall in my bathroom had to be redone and resurfaced after the roof sprang multiple leaks).

This is your industry on crack

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:06:00 -0700

Finally, someone (in this case, Liz Benston) has written the definitive user-friendly analysis of how the casino industry crashed and burned. To try and quote the salient points would require little short of reprinting the entire article (to say nothing of its copious charts).

In essence -- as run through the S&G juicer -- we're dealing with an industry that could be said to have lost its marbles four to five years ago. As I've contended on the Vegas Gang podcasts, captains of the casino industry, borne aloft on a bubble of illusory "wealth," mistook a bubble for a baseline. Instead of paying down debt on acquisitions, they doubled down on extra-super-megaresorts and wholly unncessary LBOs.

And now that the party's ended, the resultant hangover is shaking out the business like a case of the DTs. The irony is that Strip revenues have reverted to 2005 levels ... back when business was pretty darn 'phat,' and MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment were so flush they were able to devour Mandalay Resort Group and Park Place Entertainment, respectively, with scarcely a burp.

One of the few things now standing between insolvent casino companies -- a group that may soon include both Harrah's and MGM -- and outright disaster is that gaming has become "too big to fail." In an otherwise normal economy, collapsing companies like Herbst Gaming, Black Gaming, Colony Capital and even big shots like Station Casinos would probably be staring receivership in the face. But extraordinary forbearance -- in more than one sense of the term -- by lenders is keeping the lights on and the doors open. The bankers and bond markets have obviously decided it's better to keep their wobbly dance partners upright than let gravity take its course. Lord knows, the seismic impact of a cascading series of casino bankruptcies beggars the imagination and not in a good way.

Into this maelstrom, is flung the news that two companies are going to miss their scheduled 10-K filings. In the case of Pinnacle Entertainment, they need some extra time to perform mark-to-market ledger-demain, writing down $275 million-$330 million. J.P. Morgan analysts are sanguine, though, partly because of an 18% increase in fourth-quarter revenue. Also, although Pinnacle's net loss may be as high as $308 million, other results "should be above expectations, reflective of PNK’s strong Louisiana performance at Lake Charles, stable New Orleans trends, and a ramp at Lumiere [Place] in St. Louis. Trends that, generally, should continue."

Also playing for time is MGM Mirage. According to the Sun, last week's draw-down of credit has tapped out the company's liquidity, a statement confirmed in a J.P. Morgan note. Contrarily, the Review-Journal implies there's plenty left.

(Update: MGM tells me, no, there isn't and I was wrong to have concluded otherwise last week. Error duly noted. Self-flagellation in progress.)

Whatever the case, Wall Street is sounding like it's accepted that Chapter 11 is all but inevitable. Slightly less apocalyptic scenarios still include potential defaults, debt-for-equity swaps that would surely cost Kirk Kerkorian his majority ownership, asset sales, a restructured balance sheet and a $7 billion note that's less of a balloon payment than an incoming Hindenberg.

Or, as Morgan analysts write, per their wait-and-see strategy: "We expect to hear from MGM over the next few weeks, and suspect it is or shortly will be working with its banks on amending its bank covenants (leverage covenants now likely tripped after drawing down debt last week and hoarding cash) and looking to restructure its bank debt, among the other options MGM is considering (asset sales, amending CityCenter, etc.)."

Emendations to CityCenter? That would be an extremely bitter pill for MGM to swallow. First the Harmon truncation, now this prospect. In a totally unscientific measurement, page views of our online image gallery of Aria and Vdara were barely a ripple compared to the levels of interest manifested in Encore, M Resort and, good golly, even the Cabana Suites at the El Cortez -- all of which have vastly outpaced Aria/Vdara in viewership. Like I said, unscientific but who'da thunk we'd see an El Cortez ≥ CityCenter equation?

And we still haven't touched upon today's earnings report from Isle of Capri (half good, half bad) or the latest round in the Station-vs.-Boyd catfight, chock full of hissing and spitting. We live in interesting times, to be sure, regardless of whether that's a blessing or a curse.

Boyd vs. Station II

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:58:00 -0700

Well, that was a waste of a good hour. Boyd Gaming teased its Thursday morning conference call with intimations that All (or at least Some) Would Be Revealed about its surprise bid for most of the assets of Station Casinos. Boyd execs made a few pro forma comments about the offer at the top of the show, for want of a better term. They then announced that they would be taking no questions about the Station bid, so don't you be asking any, sonny.

Later, they did relax to the extent of allowing that they assume that Station's management contract with the Thunder Valley tribal casino near Sacramento would be included (but implied that Station's management pact with a Michigan tribe would not). The reason that the general public is in some confusion about what Boyd would be paying $950 million for is: Boyd itself is uncertain. Company officials implied they weren't getting any cooperation from Station -- or to the mythical entity that Boyd's president consistently refers to as "Stations [sic] Casinos." (You know ... the archivals of Boyds Gamings and builders of Red's Rocks Resorts.) After he buys it, of course, he can call it whatever he wants.

One of the many questions begged by Boyd's non-presentation was what's going to happen to Echelon, now that the company proposes to cannibalize its remaining $2 billion in borrowing capacity (against $2.6 billion in debt) to finance the Station deal. That money had been earmarked for finishing Echelon. Seemingly intent on having his cake and eating it too, Boyd prexy Keith Smith said, "We have nothing to report on [Echelon]" but added that having a Strip presence remained a long-term goal. Translation: Don't hold your breath.

Smith also ducked some pointed Larry Klatzkin queries regarding performance expectations at Blue Chip, in Indiana. (He evaded a question about ADRs, too.) ~~CFO~~ COO Paul Chakmak, referring to the expanded riverboat complex as "the new Blue" (do I sense a marketing slogan there?), said that early results are promising if not definitive. He noted that a record 2008 and January '09 performance at Delta Downs in Louisiana "shows the value of our geographic diversity" and noted that Borgata was the only Atlantic City casino to post growing slot win in 2008. Boyd will be taking a variety of one-time charges, including on some of its North Las Vegas real estate, and will be drawing out the payment schedule on Dania Jai-alai, a would-be Florida casino venture that has gone into the freezer, due to a disappointing Sunshine State market.

"Our goal is not just to get by," Chakmak said, while allowing that the Las Vegas locals market "remains challenging." Downtown, he added, was a better scene, given that increased charter flights were offsetting any effect that might be felt from reduced commercial airline service to Hawaii. Why one would want to exponentially expand into a "challenging" Vegas market right now was yet another of those questions that didn't get to be asked.

Good news for bargain hunters in Atlantic City; Smith expects promotional allowances to "stay elevated" in 2009. He also said that, with only two weeks of service so far, it's much too early to prognosticate about the performance of the ACES train (a joint venture with Harrah's Entertainment). Boyd execs did talk up the savings achieved by infusing T.G.I. Fridays, Fuddruckers, Sbarro, etc. into their locals properties. If you were a Boyd restaurant employee whose eatery was displaced to make room for a fast-food franchise, you might not share that enthusiasm.

Gibbons retreats, sorta

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:33:00 -0700

Gov. Jim Gibbons has scuttled away from one of his several proposals to jack up taxes on the only segment of Nevada that's carrying its own weight -- the casino bidness. He's retreating from a demand that casinos pay taxes on uncollected markers (which, in turn, would be certain to cause a tightening of casino credit). Midnight Jim continues, though, to support raising hotel-room taxes in Clark and Washoe counties, and taxing comped meals. The casino industry's love affair with Gibbons -- which helped get him into office -- has so far proven a one-way romance.

Worries about Boyd. Here's why I resist the occasional invitation to give stock picks: No sooner have I sung the praises of Boyd Gaming's sound fundamentals, its diversified casino portfolio and its (Echelon excepted) aversion to risk, comes news that analysts have the heebie-jeebies in re Boyd. A slow-ramp-up at Water Club in Atlantic City and weakness in the Las Vegas locals market are the primary worries.

Advertising during the Oscars: Casinos that ran ads during last night's interminable Academy Awards snoozer included M Resort (twice), Encore, the CasaBlanca in Mesquite and Green Valley Ranch, which has suddenly discovered a great lurve for the local clientele. The latter is quite a turnaround for a property that used to tout its high-end cachet. Oh, and Mickey Rourke got totally, utterly and criminally screwed. Which ruined the evening right then and there.

Atlantic City Death Watch, cont. After taking a long gander at the market, Macquarie Securities analyst Joel Simkins had this to say: “In our view, there is a distinct possibility that one to three casinos could be permanently closed in the next few years, particularly when many older locations are barely breaking even and, we believe, cannot be rehabbed to be economically viable.” [emphasis added]

Anybody care to speculate which casinos Simkins has on the "do not resuscitate" list? Resorts Atlantic City is a no-brainer for the "one." As for the "to three," we could toss in the Atlantic City Hilton and Trump Marina, where the news comes in two flavors -- Bad and Worse.

The Tropicana might also be on the bubble, partly because it's not performing up to its preponderant size and also on account of interim management's inability to restore the business that was lost during the Columbia Sussex reign of error. A veteran Trump-watcher has another suggestion, writing that"his decision to abandon and bad-mouth the company suggests that this may not be the routine Chapter 11 bankruptcy from which the company eventually emerges. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last gasp for Trump's three Atlantic City casinos."

Looking for good news in Vegas

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:08:00 -0700

If I wanted to drive myself to strong drink, I could write about depressing, atrocious numbers coming out of Nevada casinos in December. But as that great philosopher, Linus in Peanuts, would remind me, it's better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. (Next panel: Lucy hollering, "You stupid darkness!") Let's just say that December revenues hew to my saw that when Wendover sneezes, Nevada catches pneumonia and move on.

Two Sundays ago, the Review-Journal ran a pair of stories that warranted mention here at the time but got lost in the shuffle. Time to give credit where it's due, especially as these articles highlight some of silver linings inside the present-day storm front.

Boyd Gaming's is the least-sexy brand among the major casino operators ... but sexiness can be overrated. (See: Station Casinos) Unlike a certain crosstown rival which put all its eggs in the Vegas basket, Boyd has always rejoiced in a diversified portfolio. With Wall Street falling in love with the regional casino market, Boyd is likely to experience newfound appreciation on the Street.

Echelon: Stopped in the nick of time.

No wonder CFO Josh Hirsberg strikes such a sanguine tone. He also fesses up to a number of uncertainties, which is a refreshing change of pace. True, the company has halved its 401(k) matches but it hasn't deep-sixed them altogether, unlike several competitors. Also, it stopped Echelon while it still had the ability to alter the scale of the project, whereas Caesar Palace's Octavius Tower had crossed that Rubicon. It certainly doesn't rank anywhere near as high on the Mortification Meter as MGM Mirage's forced truncation of The Harmon (now to be an ungainly stump) or Las Vegas Sands' abrupt cessation of its St. Regis tower. Boyd's ongoing infatuation with fickle Morgans Hotel Group remains a major puzzlement but let's not belabor that now.

Boyd's chances of coming out the economic tsunami intact look good. Besides, the company has surprised people before. Who would have picked it to be the one that would shake up the Atlantic City market and force everyone else to keep pace?

A project that has the makings of a comparable success story in Las Vegas is M Resort, brainchild of the Marnell family. (You know, the folks who gave The Rio its cachet -- before Harrah's Entertainment took over and "geriatrified" the place.) Admittedly, $1 billion for a 390-room hotel/casino doesn't sound anything like optimal bang for the buck, but M Resort has three things going for it that Station's Red Rock Resort and Aliante Station don't: location, location, location.

Strategically, M's site is killer. It sits just north of the pass through which I-15 flows into the Vegas Valley, as you head in from California. In fact, you see the M tower even before you reach the pass, stunningly framed between the canyon walls. The vista from the north side of M ought to give it must-visit cachet when it opens in two weeks (March 1). The relative paucity of hotel rooms may bespeak caution over whether the stay-off-Strip/commute-to-Strip business model has worked yet. As they say on Wall Street, "visibility is limited" because like-minded Green Valley Ranch and South Point have gone private.

Also, by limiting their exposure on the hotel side -- where so much of the rest of the market is overexposed -- the Marnells should have supply/demand dynamics in their favor. A place like Morgans' Hard Rock Hotel, which only drew a third of its cash flow from gambling before Morgans went on a frenzied expansion binge, is super-exposed in the area that's most sensitive to price fluctuations -- hotel rooms -- and soon to become even more so. (The HRH puts a brave spin on it but it's no secret why the project is fully funded: It's 85% owned by the bank which, like the pig in the ham-and-egg-breakfast analogy, is committed while Morgans [i.e., the chicken] has but an interest.)

One also has to laud CEO Anthony Marnell III's incremental preparation for the Vegas market: a stint managing a tribal casino (giving him experience in the drive-in market), followed by acquisition of the Saddle West in Pahrump (ditto the locals market), then Laughlin. So his $1 billion dice-throw was approached via a circumspect route. George Maloof has already shown that a steady locals/hipsters mix can work as a business model. M Resort is the first project since The Palms to wholeheartedly go that route.

With nearby Olympia Gaming and Station (Inspirada) casino developments on indefinite hiatus, Marnell should be firmly entrenched before anyone else in the area gets a shovel in the ground. It's a serendipitous combination of preparation and circumstance. Of course, M could be either a succes d'estime or an outright bust, but the buzz I've been hearing is strong.

Tamares Group giveth (booking a new magic show into the Las Vegas Club) and Tamares taketh away, pulling back on a planned art museum (above). So if this is no time to invest $12 million in an art museum, maybe Tamares might want to invest it in its casinos. Comic relief is supplied by Mayor Oscar Goodman, who's been exceptionally obtuse this week. (See: President Obama, Silly Feud with)

Casinos in Texas are one of the longest of long shots but Galveston's name keeps coming up. The whole thing screams "Tilman Fertitta!", especially since we know he's wanted a casino there and was even rather colorfully accused of surreptitiously installing casino infrastructure in his Galveston convention center. He got a good chuckle out of that one, as I recall.

Tamares' good deed

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:57:00 -0700

Lichtenstein-based Tamares Group bought a gaggle of downtown Las Vegas casinos from Jackie Gaughan five years ago and hasn't seemed to know what to do with them since. However, one unpublicized kindness by Tamares -- brought to our notice by an LVA reader -- deserves mention and praise:

"I'm writing to bring to your attention a kind deed that the management of the Plaza Hotel (Mr. Freddie Maatook and staff) do for the Veterans living at the VA home in Boulder [City].

"Every Thursday morning they treat the vets to free all-inclusive breakfast. For years, it was at the Las Vegas Club but now it has been moved to the buffet at the Plaza. We happen to be friends with one of the WWII vets (91 years old) and it is the highlight of his week.

"In this time of cutbacks, it is an especially generous contribution that goes unnoticed except to the vets. They go to other casinos BUT this is the only one that 'treats' them."

My thanks -- and those of LVA -- go out to Tamares for taking care of the "Greatest Generation" and its successors. This European company does itself proud -- and makes you wonder if any U.S.-based casino companies are setting a similar example.

Sign of the times II

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:09:00 -0700

This image, taken Saturday at the Plaza Hotel & Casino downtown, pretty much speaks for itself. Auction holders Real Estate Disposition Corp. were scheduled to hold another auction today. The choice of the down-on-her-luck Plaza as venue is apt ... although if the REDC had a sense of black humor, it'd hold its foreclosure auction at the in-Chapter 11 Tropicana Las Vegas.

Photo: © Erik Kabik/RETNA

The best thing that could happen to the Plaza would be if this Forest City casino project went through, just behind the Plaza on a portion of Oscar Goodman's famous 66 acres. The potential foot-traffic benefits are obvious and brand-new competition downtown might finally force owner Tamares Group to get off its duff and reinvest in the Plaza -- assuming it hasn't flipped its misguided real estate play and fled town by then.

Another Benny Binion descendant dies before his biblical allotment of three score and 10 years has run its course.

It's a trend! The prime minister of China is the latest shoe-throwing victim. If this continues to catch on, it could really liven up shareholder meetings -- especially those of Las Vegas Sands.

Bargain$ tonight in Vega$

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:37:00 -0700

Suppose that you got a sudden urge to visit Vegas on a Tuesday night ... tonight, to be specific. You'd find that the customer is king, at least as far as pricing goes. A few minutes spent browsing Travel.Ian.com yielded the following revelations.

The exception that proves the rule is Red Rock Resort, which is advertising rooms at $160/night. Better you should drive the extra couple of miles to Suncoast, where they're charging half as much.

• Downtown, believe it or not, is commanding a slightly higher price point that some well-regarded off-Strip and near-Strip locals casinos. Rooms at Boyd Gaming's California Hotel and Fremont are going for $40 while The Orleans is fetching but $34.67. The "Off-Strip Bargain" award has to go to Boyd, which can put you up at Sam's Town for $21. True, you can stay at Fitzgeralds for $22 ... but it's Fitzgeralds. 'Nuff said.

• Honorable mention goes to Palace Station, where $29.99 gets you a room, just a walk (admittedly a rather hazardous walk) from Rat Pack hangout The Golden Steer.

• Conversely, the "Don't They Know There's a Recession?" award goes to our old friends, Columbia Sussex, who obliviously charge $159* at the Westin Casuarina at a time when you might stay at adjacent Platinum or nearby Paris-Las Vegas for $129, Bill's Gamblin' Hall or Bally's for $69, or even the Flamingo for $50. Then there's the "On-Strip Bargain" winner ...

• Caesars Palace at $90. The Caesars price was hardly the lowest one found on the Strip, but if you were graphing room rate vs. quality of property, the two lines would intersect fortuitously at Caesars. It sure beats ...

• Staying at Circus Circus for $24.95 (assuming you're not going the Airstream trailer-in-the-RV park route; $45 a night in the depths of winter -- such a deal!). Though Harrah's Entertainment is, in our one-night snapshot, getting clobbered by MGM Mirage in terms of price points, it can at least take bragging rights in the "For the Truly Desperate" award category, offering Imperial Palace for $32.53/night. Clowns or bad karma: The choice is yours.

Without belaboring the exercise any further, there is one lesson to be drawn ...

Where Steve Wynn goes, the money follows. The rising tide that lifts all nearby boats is called "Encore." While Encore itself is a relative bargain at $169 tonight, Wynn Las Vegas is listing rooms at $299 (surpassed only by the Four Seasons, $319 at the other end of the Strip), Palazzo/Venetian is up to $199, as is Treasure Island, while even Trump International is able to eke out $109.33/night. And despite being the oldest of the Wynn-authored properties, The Mirage is kicking butt at $229 tonight. If it's true that MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren is driving a hard bargain for that place, can you blame him?

* -- The local papers are constantly filled with rants about how much more affordable Vegas would be if got those damn unions out of here. Odd then that the Westin, a non-union shop, has some of the highest rates on or near the Strip, huh?

Something new for Downtown

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:10:00 -0700

Roughly two months hence, the El Cortez will open its extension, the Cabana Suites at the El Cortez (yes, that's the full name). It's to be a 64-unit mix of rooms, mini-suites and suites.

According to the PR folks ...

"The Cabana Suites will bring the spirit of 1950s South Beach to Las Vegas with modern and stylish rooms and an outside design that has a contemporary Art Deco feel, reflecting the energy of downtown Las Vegas ... The new hotel will bring an artistic style that has not been seen in downtown Las Vegas, and its sleek design and style fits in perfectly within Las Vegas’ arts district.* Also, the Cabana Suites will offer cost friendly luxury that anyone can afford ... iPod docks and flat screen HD televisions, an expanded entrance lobby, an enhanced fitness center and a landscaped walkway providing convenient access from the Cabana Suites to the El Cortez."

(* -- OK, so it's on the far side of downtown from the Arts District, but who's keeping score?)

Anything that helps stimulate traffic reintegrate the El Cortez into the downtown casino core is to be lauded, as the property is about as far out on the east side of the city as one wants to go. From the accompanying pictures, it's impossible to tell if the rooms will be capacious or claustrophobic, but ...

... they'll be modishly tricked out ...

... with just a hint of Austin Powers.

It may be small-scale (even the term "boutique" seems too grand) compared to some of the monoliths in the 2009 pipeline. But a downtown Las Vegas that's seen vast expansion of the Golden Nugget, not to mention new, revitalizing ownership of the Four Queens and Binions, is a reality that seemed literally incredible a bare five years ago.

Bobby Ray Who?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:27:00 -0700

Tamares Group's raggle-taggle bunch of downtown Vegas casinos is onto its third management company in four years. Its first stalking horse, Barrick Gaming, made a lot of grandiose noises but turned out to be a big bag of hot air. Navegante Group then tried to make a go of it, but ultimately chafed at the tightness of Tamares' purse strings.

Yesterday, some chance correspondence with Tamares' local PR reps gave me the opportunity to find out who'd succeeded Navegante as Tamares "beard," because whoever it was had done an impressive job of staying under the radar. The name that came back was BRH Gaming, formed 13 months ago by former Stratosphere executive Bobby Ray Harris. If the mailing address looks familiar, it's because it's ... the Union Plaza, Tamares' downtown flagship. So we hardly even have one degree of separation between Tamares and BRH. Given that and the timing of the company's formation, it's reasonable to surmise that BRH was formed for the express purpose of doing Tamares' bidding once Navegante was out.

The offices of BRH Gaming.

A search of local newspapers turned up exactly one mention of Harris, from mid-2003 when he was senior vice president of operations at the Stratosphere. The Strat was a well-run property in those days (one hears not-so-good things about Goldman Sachs' current stewardship) and perhaps Harris can achieve the turnaround that eluded his predecessors.

But, given the procession of management companies trooping in and out of the Union Plaza, Vegas Club, the Western, etc., it's more than time that the Nevada Gaming Control Board abandoned its gentlemanly fiction that Tamares is just a "passive landlord" and make it apply for a gaming license. It's pretty obvious who's calling the shots on Main Street and I'd lay money it's not Bobby Ray Harris.

Unwanted Vegas bargain

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 11:35:00 -0700

So, after making the big bad Fire Department the fall guy for Dec. 31's sucktastic fireworks display (more of an obfuscation than a display, really) it turns out that the culprit was organizer Las Vegas Events. Perhaps, in a new bow to Truth in Packaging, it will rebrand itself Las Vegas Non-Events.

The problem wasn't that -- as initially reported -- new fire-safety rules prevented launching fireworks from Strip rooftops. Rather, LVE was too cheap to pay the $200K that compliance would have required. This is the first time I can recall hotel-tax money being spent thriftily, as the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (the prime room-tax beneficiary) is in the habit of flinging great gobs of it to the four winds. But spend an extra 200 grand on the Strip's single biggest party night? Nosiree Bob, can't have any of that. There's a recession on, you know. Or, "The first priority is the experience on the Strip," to borrow the excuse du jour. Although, if the latter is the case, why bother firing off pyrotechnics from the Convention Center (well off the Strip) and beneath the Fremont Street Experience canopy ('nuff said)?

Based on experience, I'd say to expect LVE to stay atop its high horse for maybe another fortnight and then, when it hopes nobody is looking, admit that "It was a mistake." Sort of like how NBA All-Star Weekend was the greatest thing since sliced bread -- until it wasn't.

Nevada in October: It was the pits

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:47:00 -0700

Taken at face value, October's revenue numbers for Nevada casinos were calamitous. Looked at in context (i.e., coming off a 10% increase from October '06 to '07) they were ... still bad. But I'm going to resist the temptation to jump off my second-floor balcony at LVA HQ, especially since we're measuring the most anemic month of 2008 against the ~~strongest~~ second-strongest of 2007.

However: The next time somebody, anybody says the casino industry is "recession proof," they should be made to walk the plank straight into the new Mirage volcano, where their screams will mingle piquantly with the percussive stylings of Mickey Hart. Every day, I see more boarded-up store fronts and, last weekend, the Better Half and I were able to book a bargain-rate stay at Loews Lake Las Vegas. Talk about a ghost town: Other than the quacking of ducks, there was not a sound to be heard from our patio. (The casino across the lake at MonteLago wasn't quite dead, but they might want to keep those defibrillators handy.)

In an economy that has been brought to near-total ruination under the malign neglect of George W. Bush, it would be just plain unrealistic to expect people to gamble as they did during Vegas' halcyon years. We should have known this day was coming the moment we started reading about credit card and mortgage debt reaching unprecedented levels, as Americans lived off tomorrow to pay for today.

To the numbers ...

Again, remember that these declivities are magnified by being directly compared to a robust year-before performance. The big story appears to be quadruple-whammy leveled on the Strip, where table game drop was down (-20%), as was baccarat drop (-36%), ditto table hold, ditto baccarat hold. Less play + unlucky play goes a long way (as in $100 million-plus) toward explaining the wretched -26% overall comparison. A 17% slippage in slot handle didn't help, but the real damage was done in the table pits, which led the way to a 10th straight month of declines.

The locals market is still slightly (3%) up for the year, but October won't help, with Downtown (-20%), Laughlin (-15%), the Boulder Strip (-28%) and North Las Vegas (-35%) -- where Station Casinos was poised to open Aliante Station -- all taking it on the chin. Compared to those numbers, Reno's "mere" 7% dropoff looks like a moral victory or something.

After posting an anemic ~~$475~~ $905 million for October '08 ($475 million on the Strip), was Nevada able to match the previous November's less-than-stellar ~~$520~~ $981 million ($520 million " ")? The answer will tell us whether we've hit an extremely nasty pothole or been driven clear off the road.

Update: Table game play was extremely lucrative on the Boulder Strip, of all places, which means ... which means ... nah, I got nuthin'.

In fairness to Leon Black (see previous item), his new gambit of gobbling up $20 billion worth of devalued debt beats the heck out of, say, buying an already-debt-encumbered Harrah's Entertainment at a premium price. But, given the choice between investing one's money with Apollo Management and hiding it under the mattress, the mattress is looking awful good at the moment. At least money's not going to lose any value there.

New blogs on the block

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 12:43:00 -0700

A couple of new bloggers just rode into town, meaning I'm going to have raise my game a bit. Actually, they've been in town for quite a long time and know where many of the bodies are buried, but are relatively new to the blogosphere. One is Jeff Burbank, whose contrarian Las Vegas Downtown News doesn't pull any punches. (Though I wish he'd turn his sights on those do-nothings at Tamares Group.) Burbank is also noteworthy as the author of License to Steal, the standard reference work on gambling regulation in Nevada. I always keep a copy within reach.

Over at the R-J corral, Howard Stutz is doing an online version of Inside Gaming. He's only been at it for a few days and, for the moment, it's a sort of parking lot for items that don't quite merit a full news story but are too worthwhile to be tossed aside. Besides, it's not like the guy isn't criminally overworked already. His R-J masters expect multiple bylines per day (and sometimes multiple updates of the same story, too), plus his Sunday column plus contributions to the Las Vegas Business Press. So I wouldn't blame him if he looks on this "opportunity" more as an additional burden.

Dig these dancing queens while yet you may.

As we're now one month and counting from the closing night of Mamma Mia! at Mandalay Bay, let's pause for a bit of good news. Not only has the celluloid version become Britain's highest-grossing film of all time (unadjusted for inflation), but first-day sales of the DVD outshot previous record-holder Titanic by 34%. It'll be a shame to lose the best show on the Strip but The Lion King isn't exactly chopped liver and -- best of all -- it's not giving ground to another Cirque du Soleil show. If Cirque ever gets its Silly Putty-covered mitts on ABBA, I'm going to enter a Trappist monastery.

Sally Rand has left the building

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:50:00 -0700

That corpse you may have stumbled across while strolling the riverbanks of Pittsburgh is Pennsylvania's 'one and one-third' rule. It was a legislative fig leaf whose ostensible purpose was to prevent the prime casino/racino opportunities in the state from being gobbled up by a couple of operators. It's what helped doom Harrah's Entertainment's bid for a Pittsburgh casino, as few seemed willing to believe Harrah's was merely the minority investor/advisor it said it was. (Since Harrah's was already the owner of a racino in Chester, Pa., that scotched its chances for more than a 33% share of anything else.)

So Pittsburghers got Don Barden instead. Didn't work out too well. (Then again, who could have predicted Harrah's would be in the parlous financial health from which it currently suffers?)

Anyway, earlier this month, Pennsylvania's Gaming Control Board bowed to the inevitable and transferred the Pittsburgh license to developer Neil Bluhm, owner of the as-yet-unbuilt SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia. Which means that the Pittsburgh project will actually get done now. But ...

Although Bluhm technically holds only a small stake in the soon-to-be Rivers Casino, the license is in his name. And a Bluhm-controlled entity, Walton Street Capital, is one of the major stakeholders. And the CEO of the project is Greg Carlin, who also just so happens to be CEO of SugarHouse. (Lest it be unclear, in my opinon -- not that it matters -- Bluhm has an admirable track record as a developer and is the sort of corporate citizen the casino industry needs.)

So let's call out the 1.33 rule for the fiction it has become. If the PGCB isn't going to enforce it in other than the most cosmetic fashion, the Pennsylvania Lege should repeal it. This fan dance isn't fooling anyone.

Speaking of Neil Bluhm, he and Greg Carlin have turned up in Illinois, where they're amongst the bidders for the state's 10th and final casino license. The deleterious financial effects of the Illinois smoking ban and the state's staggering tax rates on casinos have scared off all but a trio of no-name outfits: Bluhm's Midwest Gaming & Entertainment, Waukegan Gaming and Trilliant Gaming, steered by the Flying Dutchman of the casino industry, Alex Yemenidjian.

The former MGM Mirage and film-studio exec tried to jimmy his way back into Vegas this year, asking a federal bankruptcy court to force Tropicana Entertainment to accept a loan from a Canadian firm with which Yemenidjian had become affiliated. Bluhm, whose base of operations is Chicago, might have a "home field advantage," but he's crying foul over Yemenidjian's opening gambit. The erstwhile casino executive is plunking down a whopping $435 million to, in effect, buy that 10th license. Crass? Yes. Persuasive? Undoubtedly.

Bluhm, by contrast, is offering only $100 million upfront, followed by a series of conditional $10/year payments. Waukegan Gaming effectively splits the difference, bidding $225 million for the license. If Yemenidjian is going to throw $435 million at the license alone, that raises the question of whether he's robbing Peter to pay Paul: i.e., Will commensurate capital be available to build the casino? (Magic 8 Ball says, "In this economy?!?")

Help the Neon Museum. All it takes is two clicks of your mouse. Just go to Hampton Inns' Nevada Landmarks page and click on the "Vote for this Landmark" link for the Neon Museum (or the Nevada Northern Railway Museum or Carson City's Children's Museum of Northern Nevada, if you're so inclined). The winner of the plebiscite will receive a donation from Hampton Inns at year's end. Thank you, Hampton. You're a class act.

Vegas electoral oddity

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:58:00 -0700

Today's Las Vegas Sun has a precinct-by-precinct breakdown of how President-elect Barack Obama won the Las Vegas metro area. In colorful map form, it shows Obama winning Downtown (handily) and most of the Strip ... save for MGM Mirage's string of properties from New York-New York northward through Bellagio. (Yes, you can tell your friends a Republican won "New York" this year.) I'm happy to report that my neighborhood went pretty gosh-darn "blue," while unassailable fortresses of support for Sen. John McCain included CityCenter, The Cosmopolitan and Monte Carlo, along with Summerlin, Boulder City, Southern Highlands and that hotbed of populism, Lake Las Vegas.

Reader recommendations

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:55:00 -0700

Last week, I solicited recommendations for affordable hotel rooms, on behalf of a reader. For those of you who don't monitor the "Comments" threads, here's what some readers had to offer ...

• Why not the Main Street Station; it's downtown, clean and comfortable with nice beds including down comforters. Decent food and not bad gambling! Rooms are reasonable.

• Hooters, it isn't the most modern, but it's probably the prototype of what people mean when they babble about "boutique" hotels. Not too large, intimate feel, and balconies that still be accessed.

• I never stayed there in its heyday, but I think the criticism of the Plaza is a bit unwarranted. Is it top quality, no, but it is a fun place to play, great sportsbook, and you don't have to worry about spilling a drink on the carpet. I really believe some critiques I read online are from people who do not realize that in a town where one room may cost you $199 a night, the hotel with the $35 room for the same night might not be of the same quality.

We also got a must-to-avoid missive about Imperial Palace, known to locals as "Impotent Palace." Vox populi, vox dei.

Seen last weekend at Caesars Palace: "On Friday, a substantial amount of water was leaking from the ceiling in the Caesars Palace Forum Casino. Four large wastebaskets were hastily placed in the middle of the casino floor to catch the water--which made Harrahs premier property look like a low-rent grind house. The problem was resolved by Saturday, but it illustrated what happens when you're almost $25 billion in debt and losing money every day: You opt for what's euphemistically called 'deferred maintenance,' which means you don't spend any money on repairs until the pipes break."

Just say 'no'

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:35:00 -0700

Fall is in the air here and so is election fever. I'm just back from early voting and a honkin' big Obama rally is gearing up on the other side of town, so the mind is full of matters electoral.

The responsibility that comes with this bully pulpit includes making election recommendations with restraint. So, with exception of a ballot initiative or three, I'm going to attempt to refrain from stumping for individual candidates. Although I would humbly suggest that you might -- might -- want to think carefully before voting for any candidate who enjoys the blessing of that noted casino industry expert, pediatrician James Dobson. (He's not a theologian, but he plays one on the radio.)

Turnout for early voting has been heavy here in Nevada, as elsewhere, but perhaps some of you who are in Clark or Washoe counties are like my better half and enjoy the patriotic sensation that accompanies voting on Election Day. If that's the case, I'd like to share a few thoughts on Question 5.

Buried deep within the ballot, Question 5 asks whether a sliding-scale tax of 2-3% should be tacked onto current hotel-room taxes "to avoid large cuts in the funding of education and other state programs," and later to be employed as a funding stream for K-12 education and teacher salaries.

Opinion within the casino bidness is divided on Question 5, although certain captains of the industry had a hand in its conception (which was far from immaculate, lemme tell ya). Yes, it's for a good cause and, yes, it's purely an advisory question, what opponents call "nothing more than a government-paid opinion poll." (emphasis theirs)

Given the blizzard of varying room-tax rates already in effect, an extra 2% or 3% would be felt most in Glitter Gulch downtown and least out in Laughlin, Boulder City and Pahrump -- if you fancy staying there. The Nevada Secretary of State's office estimates that, should you visit Vegas twice a year, three nights per visit at an ADR of $100/night, the cost of your trips will increase an aggregate of $18.

Would this be a significant economic deterrent? I doubt it -- though perhaps consumers feel otherwise. As with many things in life, it's ultimately a matter of principle. As much as Nevada schools need improvement and as unattractive as our teacher salaries are, if Nevadans want to capitalize them, we need to take that responsibility upon ourselves ... not pass the buck to our customers, our guests, the people who keep the lights burning on the Strip.

This isn't "education funding" -- it's freeloading. And, yes, I would rather pay a (small and progressive) state income tax -- let's say 5% -- than endorse Question 5's exploitive attitude towards the tourists and conventioneers who are the primary and integral bulwark of Nevada's economy. Otherwise, it's like saying, "Thanks for your business and please ignore this kick in your butt."

... and don't even get me started on the subject of Allegiant Managing Partner Ponder Harrison's proposal to start charging passengers for carry-on luggage. (Too bad we can't vote on that!) I guess people are expected to fly to Vegas with nothing but their money and the clothes on their backs -- the few that the TSA lets us wear, that is.

Is Peter Carlino crazy?

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:43:00 -0700

Now I know that Penn National is all a-flush with cash these days and CEO Peter Carlino is probably feeling bullish. Still, in a recent visit to Vegas to assess possible casino acquisitions, he's alleged to have acted like he just fell off the turnip truck.

According to Steve Wynn -- in the course of scotching a rumor that he might buy up some MGM Mirage property -- Carlino made the company an offer for Bellagio. Carlino must think that J. Terrence Lanni is an awfully desperate man. Why else would MGM part with its most powerful revenue driver on the Strip, a casino that is regularly in Majestic Research's top three when it comes to game usage (over-simply, sheer preponderance of players)?

Carlino made news by publicly dissing the Tropicana as a potential buy, saying "There's better stuff" to be had. Agreed. But, unless Wynn either misheard or is making mischief, Carlino seems to have veered far off the other side of the road. There's definitely some low-hanging fruit out there: The Rio, Riviera (plus debt), Cosmopolitan (ditto), maybe even the Sahara. Why he thinks MGM would part with its most valuable asset beggars the imagination.

(Wynn's hypothesis that MGM might peddle its Atlantic City land and perhaps its half-share of Borgata makes far more sense, especially with the question of Pansy Ho's suitability still hanging fire in New Jersey. And Penn has shown interest in two other A.C. sites already.)

MGM spokesman Alan Feldman is cagey, though, keeping alive the prospect that Bellagio might be had (perhaps by someone with the initials K.K.) for the right price. But I've got to believe it would take an offer as exuberant as the one El-Ad Properties made for the New Frontier before MGM Mirage would pawn its crown jewel to a rival operator.

And don't forget Downtown: Carlino is welcome to buy out slothful Tamares Group any time he likes.

A reader asks ...

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:57:00 -0700

... for good hotel-room suggestions, for an upcoming trip -- preferably something that's maybe a little underrated and/or off the beaten path. Since you guys (and gals) stay in Vegas hotels more than I do, it seemed best to throw this one open to the collective wisdom of the readership. If you wanted a good value but didn't to descend to the level of the Tropicana or the Plaza (both of which I've heard energetically bad-mouthed by former patrons), where would you hang your hat?

Incidentally, the LVA rating system is now open to all (i.e., no longer a perk for subscribers). So as you surf to restaurant, hotel, nightclub, entertainment pages, etc., feel free to weigh in and praise or damn, or merely damn with faint praise (or praise with faint damns) as the spirit moves you.

Sunday at The Palazzo with Sheldon

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:14:00 -0700

OK, so the big fella wasn't actually there, to the best of my knowledge, but let's not allow pedanticism to get in the way of a Stephen Sondheim reference. The Better Half and I partook of a $119/night room special at the Venetian for a quiet weekend getaway.

Maybe not so "quiet." For one thing, the toilet emitted a deafening din every time it was flushed. Other than that, the decade-old hotel rooms are wearing their age lightly. The interface for the TVs is clunky and slow, unless you count the manually operated set in the bathroom. And it would be nice if one could simply draw the blinds by hand. But it was a spacious, comfortably appointed room that would have provided plenty of lebensraum over an extended sojorn. I've wanted to stay in one ever since I saw a prototype back in early '99.

(Hard to believe, but the concept of a minibar in every hotel room was considered a revolutionary-for-Vegas concept back then. Sheldon Adelson, it bears repeating, has to be counted as one of the two or three present-day figures who have done by far the most to move the "casino-based destination resort" concept forward.)

The room offer came with: comps at Lavo that we were able to parlay into five drinks, plus $50 of match play (which went unused; there's only so much you can cram into a day), etc. No "sweating the comps" there. (BTW, I have to take issue with LVA's characterization of the entrées as "Very Expensive," especially when you take into account that they're meant for sharing.)

The Zefferino brunch buffet is, price-wise, only for those in the mood to splurge, but I have no hesitation in saying it's the best I've sampled in Vegas so far. The erstwhile 40/40 Club is now the Sportsbook Bar & Grill. Former owner Jay-Z may be gone but the service there is as shitty as ever. After being pointedly ignored by the (copious) wait staff, we went over to the little coffeehouse off of Dal Toro Ristorante and were much the better off for it.

The al fresco drinking and dining at Lavo were so pleasant (and the service so exceptional) that two hours passed in what seemed like half the time. The Bloody Mary wasn't quite as good as on a previous visit, where you could eat it with a fork, but it rates up there with the ones at Gallagher's and Memphis Championship BBQ. The S.O. opted for a Saggio, which is too fruity for me, but we both enjoyed at least one Uva Bianco -- a lightly sweet martini with white grapes in lieu of olives.

Be warned, though: You'll be directly across from the ridiculous "Sirens of T.I." show that is too bad to be either Camp or even mere cheese. The dialogue would embarrass an X-rated film, although nobody goes to "Sirens" for its dramaturgic values.

Cap it off with late-night dining at Grand Luxe Café (the best value for the dollar to be had on-property) and we enjoyed the makings of a near-perfect day ... and a crowded one. Maybe the aggressive discounting of room rates was driving Venetian/Palazzo attendance, but the joint was definitely jumping. (Unless you wanted to play Wheel of Fortune; a bank of machines had just been removed from Venetian's floor.) Business wasn't shabby in either casino, but players clearly gravitate to the older gaming floor, judging from the greater density of people on games at the Venetian.

Between the sheer body count and the general high spirits on view, you'd be hard-pressed to know that there's a recession in progress. But be prepared to rack up some serious mileage when you stay there. After traversing the length of the Venetian/Palazzo megalith three or four times (I lost count), the unrelenting monumentality of it does get to be a bit much.

Then again, "a bit much" might be the Sheldon Adelson aesthetic in three little words.

Your father's Plaza.

Tamares gets wild. Those crazy party animals at Tamares Group have really cut loose with the budget this time. They've renovated all of four rooms at the downtown Plaza. Woo-hoo!

All right, these are prototypes for made-over rooms that Tamares promises to deliver once it settles on a design it likes. So far, color me unimpressed. The new-fangled room doesn't look like that much of an upgrade on the old-hat one.

Not only is $8 million-$13 million a far cry from the $100 million Tamares bulls ... claimed it was contemplating spending on the Plaza before those El-Ad Properties spoilsports showed up with their Plaza trademark, their big bankroll and their mean old plans to build a Strip megaresort.

It's also well short of what Tamares would need to spend to get to its stated goal of being "just a notch below the Golden Nugget." (Unless it's a massive notch.) Love him or hate him, owner Tilman Fertitta has spared no expense at the Nugget, and it shows. Tamares is clearly not in his league.

Plaza (the other one) & Gold Spike dispatches

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:12:00 -0700

According to the grapevine, El-Ad Properties' Plaza megaresort is not only a "go," but Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs are likely financiers. That is, if El-Ad and partner Nochi Dankner kick in more equity (I'm hearing $150 million), having exuberantly overspent on the old New Frontier site.

If the deal goes through, Goldman Sachs will have its fingers in quite a few Vegas pies. One of its beards ... sorry, I meant to say "affiliates," holds 40% of the Las Vegas Hilton and wields veto power over capital-intensive decisions there. Another octopus arm of Goldman owns Carl Icahn's former ACEP properties, including the Stratosphere. So Las Vegas has a pretty big stake in Goldman's continued financial health.

Up in downtown, The Siegel Group continues apace with its makeover of what used to be Las Vegas' dodgiest casino, the Gold Spike. A detailed set of plans is on file, complete with color swatches. I'm hard-pressed to read the document without my magnifying glass, but the exterior will get a complete face lift, there will be cabañas by the pool, and -- so I'm told -- a new neon sign is in the works. Enjoy it while you can: Word is that Siegel will run the Spike 2.0 for about five years, then demolish it in favor of something new.

Even so, that will have been 1,000% more than do-nothing Tamares Group has accomplished with the remaining casinos and motels it agglomerated from Jackie Gaughan. And since Tamares emerged from the shadows to challenge El-Ad's Plaza plans (touting a phantom $100 million renovation of its own), how much longer can the Nevada Gaming Control Board maintain the fiction that Tamares is merely a "passive landlord" that does not need to be licensed?

Speaking of the inert, what's the matter with Ameristar Casinos these days? Since the death of CEO Craig Neilsen and the sacking of John Boushy, the company hasn't done much except fire a slew of Chicago-area employees. Ameristar has hunkered down, seemingly in hopes that someone will buy it and put the present leadership [sic] out of its misery. Forward movement at Ameristar -- even with several growth opportunities in view -- appears to be nil.

... or not

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:23:00 -0700

I've been informed that Tropicana Entertainment owner William J. Yung III has signed an irrevocable proxy and cannot vote his shares, no matter how many he owns. Nor he can he regain the reins of the company.

Whether that is enough to satisfy the New Jersey Casino Control Commission remains to be seen. From what I hear, the inarguable fact that TropEnt is in Chapter 11 may be its biggest obstacle to regaining a foothold in the Garden State.

If you're looking for luxury in downtown Las Vegas ...

... the El Cortez will soon be running with the "in" crowd. Who'da ever thunk it?

On the flip side, if you've been victimized by the Vegas economy, KLAS-TV has some useful information on what to do.

One city, two Plazas

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 11:42:00 -0700

It's game, set and match to El-Ad Properties, after a Clark County jury ashcanned the remnants of Tamares Group's attempt to block El-Ad from building an oversized version of the New York Plaza on the Strip. (Parts of Tamares' case, including a claim for punitive damages, got tossed early on.)

UNLV's David G. Schwartz is too modest to say so, but it sounds like his show-and-tell presentation on the varying identities of the downtown Plaza, aka Union Plaza, was what closed the case for El-Ad. As for Tamares, in pursuing this litigation it's probably lavished more upon lawyers, motions, exhibits, etc., than it's spent on any of its downtown casinos in four wasted years of ownership. And Tamares' claim that it was going to spend $100 million on the former Union Plaza until those Tamares spoilsports came along has the fragrant aroma of bull manure.

Tamares' attorney tried to wring a few jurors' hearts by channeling the feelings of the downtown Plaza, keening that, "I can't be known as the old Plaza, I can't be the cheap Plaza, I can't be the bad Plaza."

Guess what? You already are.

Tamares mines comedic gold

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:32:00 -0700

Nothing says "quality" quite like a Tamares joint.

As the trial dubbed "Plaza Versus Plaza" winds down, Tamares Group -- owners of the downtown Plaza -- came up with a good one. The Lichtenstein-based company would have jurors believe "that it delayed renovations of the ... Plaza because it was paralyzed by the prospect of a hotel by the same name on the Strip."

Haha! Hahahahahahaha! That's rich. Who writes their material? Tamares has had four years to do something with the Plaza and its other downtown holdings and hasn't done anything ... unless you count closing a couple of low-rent motels, selling the Gold Spike and yanking some of the gambling options out of places like the Vegas Club.

Tamares hasn't renovated the Plaza because Tamares is too darn cheap to do so and has no apparent downtown strategy beyond continual drift. If anything, Elad Properties' "Plaza" project momentarily lit a fire under Tamares -- at least to the extent of spurring the company to hold a development workshop several weeks after Elad's plan became known.

Back in '04, somebody must have sold them on the idea that an assemblage of disconnected, Jackie Gaughan-held parcels would be a great real estate play. Instead, Tamares found itself holding a bunch of old casinos, running successive management teams in and out. It looks like they're stuck downtown and we're stuck with them.

Same condos, new name. The project that was previously reported on here as "Allure II" may actually turn out to be "Q," Steve Friess reports. Or it could turn into nothing at all, as Vegas condo projects are wont to do.

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.

Pinnacle: "We're the boss here!"

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:46:00 -0700

"Pinnacle tells store owner to lower his price" reads the headline in the Press of Atlantic City, and it's no exaggeration. Although the owner of the Atlantic City News Agency (a bookstore) has dropped the asking price for his property by 29%, that's just not good enough for Pinnacle Entertainment, which balks at paying more than $2.3 million. The store's owner wants $3.9 million.

"I think we have to be more realistic on price. They have a written offer. That's the way it is," huffed Pinnacle's viceroy for Atlantic City, Kim Townsend. Yup, Massa Pinnacle's giving the orders here and those pesky locals better fall in line, pronto. Although Pinnacle CEO Dan Lee has slammed the News Agency as "tawdry" because it sells adult magazines, the real tawdriness is Pinnacle's attempt to dictate market values and its picking a fight over $1.6 million in the larger context of a project on which it will spend at least $1.5 billion.

Pinnacle execs would undoubtedly reply that they're simply being fiscally responsible, and I'm sympathetic to that. But projects like Pinnacle's Atlantic City megaresort tend to be advanced with the argument that they will improve property values. Well, property values have improved -- and Pinnacle should have expected this scenario when it pushed past the boundaries of the old Sands site.

Strong language: Never have I seen a journalist who regularly covers the casino industry unload on it in the terms employed by Jeff Haney in a recent excoriation of a Boyd Gaming parlay-card promotion. While the latter's "best parlay cards on the planet" verbiage is obvious hyperbole, Haney ran the numbers and found Boyd's cards not even to be remotely the best in downtown Vegas. Haney called the claim "a blatant lie that goes beyond the usual bluster and hype and reflects poorly on legal gambling in Nevada" and "an out-and-out falsehood."

He said it was even worse than the "sleazy and demeaning to customers and visitors" promos that audaciously touted 6-5 blackjack as a "whopping" advantage. (To the casino, maybe. To the player ... not so much. You should hear the suppressed anger in former dealer Dennis Conrad's voice when 6-5 blackjack is the topic.)

Haney also opened a can of verbal whup-ass on "the bizarro realm of corporate doublespeak, where gambling is 'gaming,' the Super Bowl is the 'professional football championship contest,' and rank suckers (such as those who think Boyd has the best parlay cards) are 'valued guests.'"

His thesis boils down to a central paragraph that reads as follows: "Touting parlay cards as the best on the planet while offering average or below-average odds serves to lower the discourse on the business of state-regulated legal gambling toward the level of a big con."

Players have few advocates more outspoken than Jeff Haney. Bettors are fortunate to have such one-man truth squads on their side.

Landry's vote set; IGT blues

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:16:00 -0700

Nov. 3 is the appointed day for Landry's shareholders to vote on CEO Tilman Fertitta's $21/share buyout offer. The stock's had a wild ride lately, hitting bottom at $12.42, following a precipitate dive during what might be called Hurricane Ike weekend. No fool he, Fertitta took advantage of depressed prices to scarf up an additional 400,000 shares. The performance of Landry's huge restaurant portfolio hasn't been stellar of late, but the two Golden Nugget casinos are keeping revenues aloft, providing 43% of the company's total intake.

Although daily newspapers rarely have the luxury of indulging in analysis, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has been dipping a few toes in the analytical waters of late. Noting the Ike Effect on Landry's restaurants, the R-J finds Fertitta between a rock and a hard place: If operated revenes fall below certain benchmarks, Fertitta's financing is imperiled. But if the deal doesn't go through, a re-restructuring of debt is nigh and Landry's probably couldn't meet a margin call. Fertita's own equity contribution to the buyout consists of $90 million in cash and $97 million worth of shares.

A similar story chronicles some of the business challenges that are bedeviling International Game Technology. It doesn't get into why IGT is losing market share to Bally Technologies (which just dodged a bullet from the SEC) and WMS Industries, but it suggests that Wall Street impatience is part of the problem.

IGT is trying to pivot and position itself at the leading edge of server-based slots, something that's not going to yield any short-term results. Depending on where the impending cuts of 500-1,000 IGT jobs fall, it would be unfortunate if their effect was to impair the company's ability to innovate, simply to placate stock analysts.

Mohegan Sun in Kansas: D'oh!

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:26:00 -0700

A reader in Oklahoma City points out an obvious reason -- one which I somehow managed to completely overlook -- why the Kansas Lottery's casino-selection panel didn't go with Mohegan Sun, which I foolishly thought to be a prohibitive favorite. To wit: Most casinos in the central U.S. are tribally owned, so why use the auspices of the state to establish yet another one? The 2007-08 edition of Casino City's Pocket Gaming Directory lists five tribal casinos in Kansas and, hindsight being 20/20, it now seems obvious that there was no enthusiasm for adding a sixth, at least when your projected revenue is the lowest of any of the proposals on the table. (Mohegan Sun is the only Kansas applicant to have received no votes for its proposal.)

In a rare visit to Planet Earth, the Las Vegas Review-Journal's editorial page weighs in on smoking bans in Atlantic City and Illinois, and their deleterious effects on revenue. Judging from the well-researched nature of the piece and its novel (for R-J editorials) employment of actual facts, it must have been written by somebody conversant with the issue, like Howard Stutz.

... at least until the final five paragraphs, where it devolves into stale invective, and even rails against Nevadans' decision to ban smoking in restaurants and supermarkets. (The effrontery of those voters!) The salient fact that Atlantic City banned casino smoking because the city's gambling halls did almost nothing to comply with a smoking restriction -- basically daring the city to take action -- is also conveniently omitted. It's as though the first 14 paragraphs were written by an adult, whereupon the pen was commandeered by a tantrum-prone infant.

Update: The owners of the El Cortez have declined to comment on the allegations made to S&G by minority owner Lonny Zarowitz. A query to the Nevada Gaming Control Board remains unanswered at this time.

A "character" responds

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:30:00 -0700

You may recall that, some time back, in an item entitled "Blasts from the Past," I discussed an anomaly in the transfer of the El Cortez from Jackie Gaughan to an ownership group that included various longtime associates -- and Lonny Zarowitz. The latter is a former Gaughan employee and subsequent adversary. He accused the elder Gaughan of certain illegalities, accusations that were taken seriously as far away as New South Wales.

However, despite having tried periodically to throw a spanner into the Gaughan works, Zarowitz remains firmly ensconced within El Cortez ownership and is part of the group currently running it (and whom, presumably, we have to thank for the recent closure of the Chinese Kitchen Buffet). My musings shook loose a response from the real Lonny Zarowitz, who graciously gave permission to reprint some of his correspondence here.

Sept. 4, 2008

Dear Mr. Mckee,

I am writing in response, or more accurately to add my two cents to your blog dated June 18th concerning my situation with Jackie Gaughan, the El Cortez, & Nevada gaming authorities, among others. I have one minor criticism, namely, that you didn't make the effort to get BOTH sides of the story before forming and voicing your opinion. But given the unlikely nature of my version, and the concerted efforts to discredit me, this isn't too hard to understand.

Yet, even without the benefit of a full perspective, you managed to get nearly to the crux of the matter with your rhetorical question; "So how is it that a character like Zarowitz is going to wind up with a piece of the El Cortez, should the Nevada Gaming Commission approve the sale?" If, with a more balanced view, you had included the qualifying phrase "unless Zarowitz's allegations are true", you would have turned the key on the whole matter (let's shorten the phrase to 'UZAT' because I'll be using it again).

The whole dispute breaks down very simply. I accuse Gaughan of a series of criminal acts, and various government agencies (including the Gaming Control Board) of helping him cover it up and continue his illegal activities a la Whitey Bulger. They all deny it, and one side is LYING! Pure & simple. No misunderstandings or shades of grey. But who? Certainly the GCB would know if the allegations against THEM are true or not. So, what do they say? Well, their words say I'M the liar, but, as you point out, their actions tell a completely different story! For the better part of 5 years I did everything I could to rub their noses in my allegations. In my own concerted effort to bring warranted disrepute on the state's gaming industry and its regulators, I even passed out accusatory fliers at GCB meetings, offering to share my evidence with unsuccessful applicants, and did so with gaming opponents nationwide, all the while, daring the board to discipline me.

They never did. Why? 'UZAT'. When this recent transaction came before them, their mandate required them to determine my suitability. Did they take the opportunity to call me to task for my behavior? NO!! Why? 'UZAT'. With a multi-million dollar windfall in the balance, they never even had me fill out a form, or provide any information, financial or otherwise. Not one question! About ANYTHING!! I didn't even have to attend the hearing! Why 'UZAT'. If my allegations were false, my behavior would be reprehensible and as the ''victims' of my slanders the GCB would have had the motivation as well as the obligation to act to make me put up or PAY UP! But they didn't. Why? 'UZAT'. Sherlock Holmes would call it the curious actions of the dog in the night ... after night ... after night. As I said, clearly they know the truth, and just as clearly, they don't want anyone else to. Why? 'UZAT'

I hope you will continue to pursue this now that you realize the significance of your own questions, and trust those instincts. Finally as for your referring to me as "a character like Zarowitz" you are absolutely right on that score. The fact is, I had to choose between being one, and having none.

Thank you,
Lonny Zarowitz

Sept. 14, 2008

Dear Mr. Mckee,

Thank you for acknowledging my response. I was confident you would find my points 'interesting', as would your readers. For that reason, and in the interest of fairness, I would greatly appreciate it if you would post it for them as well. Surely, my version of events, if true, makes for a far more compelling, and important story that should have piqued your journalistic curiosity. I would also love to hear your specific opinions on the points I've made (posted or otherwise).

As for a buyout, the offer I received from Gaughan amounted to 30 cents on the dollar.(*) Incidentally, this offer came at a key point in the set up. To accept that, or any subsequent incarnation, would have been tantamount to, and easily construed as, an admission of guilt. That will never happen! The Epstein group has also demonstrated a high-handed, bad faith attitude, made possible by the same continued undue influence with GCB that first made YOUR antennae twitch, giving me no alternative but to resurrect "The Character".

Thanks, Lonny Zarowitz

* -- I had asked Mr. Zarowitz: "Given the, um, adversarial relationship between Jackie Gaughan and yourself, how is it that he (or his successors) never bought you out?"

Copies of Zarowitz's two e-mails have been shared with Mark Clayton of the GCB (as well as with the El Cortez's PR firm) and I will inform you of any official response.

Headless owner in topless bar

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:44:00 -0700

"It is amazing how people get religion once they want a gaming license," said then-Nevada Gaming Control Board member Brian Harris, back in December '98, in one of the all-time-great casino-related quotes. Harris' statement came in connection with the license-application withdrawal of the Sunrise Suite Hotel. If you've never heard of it, that's because -- sans casino -- it quickly went bankrupt, was stealthily snapped up by Carl Icahn and became Arizona Charlie's Boulder.

Harris' remark is pertinent once more the wake of last week's Control Board hearing. There, the CEO of a downtown topless bar professed to have been shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that drugs and prostitution were being peddled in his fine establishment. His attorney added that the club has received a clean bill of health ... from its own investigative service.

Regulators weren't having any of it. Nor does it say much for the charms of the Girls of Glitter Gulch that it needs slot machines to keep patrons interested. Or is that simply another manifestation of our ADD-riddled, multi-tasking society?

Another regressive tax. Since neither you nor I can afford to hire lobbyists, we're the ones who get jammed up whenever guvmint needs to find a few extra coins 'neath the sofa cushions. The latest indignity is an Internet sales tax, long bruited and finally gaining traction, I regret to say. All those eBay vendors are just going to love all the additional paperwork that they'll have to fill out if this turkey flies through Congress.

The presidential contenders are (mostly) 'Net friendly on this one. Sen. Barack Obama's position is "No" ... but with some ominous qualifiers. Sen. John McCain's flat "No" is to be preferred.

On our last "Vegas Gang" episode, we discussed whether it's true that the only color which matters in a Las Vegas casino. I was of the "No" persuasion. Further ammo comes by way of Norm!, who reports on alleged discrimination against Poetry, a club catering primarily to a black clientele.

If true, this stuff would come right out of Las Vegas' "Mississippi of the West" era -- and be another reminder of how illusory progress can be. A friend of a friend, a successful African American musician, said that a good day for him was one that went by without his being on the receiving end of a racial slur.

I don't complain too much about my lot in life since hearing that.

Telemundo rescues Neonopolis

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:39:00 -0700

OK, so they're now calling it "Fremont Square," but it's still like a fugly fortress-like concrete cube that was somebody's perverse notion of a shopping center. However, the local Telemundo affiliate wants to move its broadcast and studio operations into Neonopolis (yes, they still call it that, too). This is probably the best news the place has had since it opened.

Wet Ultra Club also wants to move in, predicting it "will be the premiere [sic] club destination on Fremont Street." True, the competition's not very stiff, except for Gold Diggers at the Golden Nugget. Shame on the Nugget, by the way, for practically burying Gold Diggers on its Web site, relegating it to three lines of copy halfway down the "Bars" page (which, if you engage your psychic powers, you'll reach by way of "Dining." Huh?)

Stump the blogger: Here's part of a reader e-mail, reprinted with permission, that left me absolutely bereft of an answer. Ergo, I'm throwing it open to the wisdom of the readership, in hopes that someone can address this poser:

I used to live in a small town on the cusp of the San Francisco area, and change-taking newspaper stands commonly sold the local paper, and some even sold the San Francisco Chronicle as well. Big collections of newspaper machines outside grocery stores would sell those two, the Oakland Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times ... and so on.

When we first moved to Vegas, I immediately noticed the lack of paper stands all over the place ... they're practically unheard of here. I quickly found out if I went to Burger King or something and wanted to read the paper at lunch, to go to the nearest gas station or drug store and buy one in there. Even then it's almost impossible to get anything other than the R-J ... and if you wanted a Times from either coast you'd practically have to go to a hotel.

What's the deal here? It seems like if you want a girl in tight clothing within an hour it's as easy as walking to the sidewalk, but if you want a newspaper you have to practically go to Borders ... Is there something about this town ... that simply doesn't like to read?

Of course, if you're staying at a Harrah's Entertainment property, you can't get the R-J either. Or has that fatwa been quietly revoked?

Case Bets: South Point, Gustav, Monte Carlo, Gold Spike, Excalibur, etc.

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:15:00 -0700

Why does a holiday weekend suck? Because it means that instead of having to dig through three days' worth of the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Monday (a depressing task under the best of circumstances), a Tuesday start means at least four days of windfall from what Hugh Jackson calls "the dead tree of record" through which one must cut brush. Solution? Chop it up into Insta-Blog fodder! Like ...

Horse dies at South Point, in front of 500 undoubtedly traumatized spectators. Leaving aside the equine tragedy, if South Point can only rustle up 500 attendees for a Friday-night event, its equestrian center may be even more of a gold-plated albatross than was originally thought.

Gulf Coast casinos ordered to close. Good grief, has common sense taken a leave of absence down there? Why was Mississippi required to force the issue?

Monte Carlo not up to code, says Clark County. Whereupon neither the county nor MGM Mirage takes responsibility for remediating the situation, each putting the onus on the other.

Wall Street comes around. The Street has a manic-depressive attitude toward gaming stocks and is coming out of its latest episode of depression. Even so, some of these stocks look ridiculously undervalued, especially Las Vegas Sands, which The Street used to think was worth three times as much.

Speaking of Sands, there's confidence and then there's foolhardiness. Then again, given the company's genius at protracting litigation to superhuman lengths, its sanguine attitude may be born of experience.

Somnolent editors awake from nap, find that Nevada's economic model isn't working, call for more of the same, go back to sleep. (BTW, here's one of those "Nevada Democrats" the editorial reflexively derides.)

First Nevada Palace fell and now the Gold Spike is half-renovated. We're going to have to come up with a new shorthand for "bottom-of-the-barrel casino" now that we won't have the Spike to kick around anymore. Stephen Siegel has done more with the place than his predecessors, absentee owners Tamares Group, accomplished in three years (unless you count the offerings they took out, like table games).

Still, Siegel's being a wee bit charitable when he says "most people underestimate the Gold Spike." Stephen, it is impossible to underestimate the Spike, the only Nevada casino for which I would have used "vile" as a description, back in its Tamares days.

Comment threads in newspapers can be a very mixed blessing, but much of the back-and-forth that follows this story about electronic poker at Excalibur is well worth reading, as it provides a great deal of hard information and a player's-eye perspective on the experiment.

Sands: More is sometimes less

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:39:00 -0700

One of the advantages of availing oneself of Las Vegas' public-transit system is that affords me plenty of time to read corporate filings. Such was the case this morning, when I spent some quality time belatedly curling up with Las Vegas Sands' 2Q08 report.

There's been some scattered evidence, here and there, that Palazzo and Venetian are leeching off one another instead of devouring others' market share. For instance, their combined operating income only slightly exceeded that of hard-hit Sands Macao during the first six months of 2008.

But LVS' decision to mulch together several categories of Palazzo/Venetian revenue clouds the picture of each megaresort's impact on the other. Instead of clear-cut comparisons between Venetian and Palazzo retail, entertainment and F&B revenues, LVS offers some cumed numbers for both properties, followed by two paragraphs of uninformative bombast.

The Venetian: older but (performing) better

The most interesting sentence in the entire filing was this disclosure: "The Venetian's occupancy of available guestrooms decreased to 90.6% [in 2Q08] ... as we chose to spread a portion of The Venetian's booked business over the 7,100 total suite inventory of the combined Venetian and Palazzo complex." If that means what I think it means, LVS was shifting bookings to Palazzo to bulk up the latter's occupancy rate, which clocked in at 93%. (Venetian occupancy was 101% a year ago.) Although Venetian ADRs were just smidgen higher than Palazzo ones, the latter produced 2% more revenue per room. Overall, a 51.7% increase in rooms brought a 52.6% uptick in room revenues. So far, so good.

Despite a comparable number of table games (131 to 128), Venetian absolutely clobbered Palazzo there, generating 37% more win per table. At the slots, the older property came out 22% ahead, largely by dint of having 300 more machines at its disposal.

The opening of Venetian Macao appears to have really kneecapped Sands Macao. Hotel occupancy actually rose but ADRs plummeted 32%. Slot win per machine was up 16%, perhaps because 305 machines had been yanked from the floor, but slot business was still competitive with Venetian Macao. Table play was better (+14% per table) at Venetian Macao, though, even with a significantly higher number of gambling positions.

Lesson: Sometimes more is more. (Does this make Sands Macao the de facto 'slot joint'?)

In a month Four Season Macao opens, whereupon things should get very interesting. The mid-sized (by LVS standards) Marina Bay project in Singapore is pegged for a 4Q09 debut, but management's official statements are vague about the opening date for Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem. Going with LVS there was one of the relatively few decisions Pennsylvania's gaming commission got spectacularly right, selecting a developer who had the cattle to go with the hat.

Remember: A rival bidder was cheapskate Columbia Sussex, parent of insolvent Tropicana Entertainment, and heaven only knows what a mess the Bethelehem project would be if the Keystone State had gone that route. It might make the Don Barden trainwreck in Pittsburgh look like a mere fender-bender.

It's a metaphysical certainty that, regardless of when it opens, Sands Bethlehem will be the poshest of the Pennsylvania casinos, setting the standard for any that follow. It not only extends the LVS brand (however you define it) into new markets, the cash flow will provide a reassuring hedge against growing (over?)exposure in Macao.

Also, with debt creeping upward -- but still well short of backbreaking Harrah's-like levels -- and early retirement of same down 62% in the first half of '08 (and practically nonexistent in 2Q08) LVS could definitely use the extra money.

Curtains for downtown arena? Bits and pieces of the acreage accumulated for the REI Neon arena/condo/casino/anything-else-you-can-think-of project are being peddled off. I have to agree with the Sun's editors here and add that I've suspected for a while that REI Neon was but a stalking horse for opening up what used to be (part of) the Arts District to casinos.

Then again, anybody foolhardy enough to build a casino out on that fringe of downtown Vegas would be so isolated from both the Strip and the downtown gaming district that he'd be unlikely to scare up the needed critical mass of traffic. Besides, I don't know if you fellows behind that stalking horse have noticed, but the casino-centric business model has already been tried downtown and found wanting. The word "diversification" mean anything?

Ameristar: What makes sense?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:45:00 -0700

Perhaps this is what happens when you outsource your business coverage to India, but Reuters had a story yesterday positing MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment as two of the likeliest buyers for Ameristar Casinos.

Uhhh, I hate to break this to Reuters, but MGM just came up $3 billion and change short on CityCenter and Harrah's is debt-strapped. So I'd say they've got their hands full. How either one would be able to swing an Ameristar acquisition is an open question. Harrah's also faces redundancy issues, as it already owns riverboats in three of Ameristar's key markets -- Council Bluffs, Iowa, and St. Charles and Kansas City, Mo. Why MGM would feel a sudden hankering for Black Hawk, Colo., plus a brace of casinos in Jackpot, Nev., is even more of a poser.

Reuters' third suggestion, Boyd Gaming, seems a lot closer to the mark. With Echelon temporarily in the deep freeze and Boyd's Blue Chip riverboat leaking market share, a passel of regional casinos in markets where Boyd doesn't currently operate could provide welcome cash flow, shore up the company against its current non-presence on the Strip, and expand the web of properties from which Boyd could funnel players into its downtown Vegas cluster or (eventually) Echelon. Of course, Boyd may still be smarting from a failed Kansas City venture a decade ago, but Ameristar's assets are proven performers.

Besides, it's a company that could use some helmsmanship, having seemed to drift since the demise of CEO Craig H. Neilsen. Although paralyzed from the neck down and often bed-bound (which I've heard resulted in some very unconventional corporate meetings), Neilsen achieved more from the neck up than most able-bodied people do in their entire lifetimes. His successor, ex-Harrah's exec John Boushy, tried to sell the Ameristar people on a change of corporate culture but they didn't want to hear about it. So, given an evident leadership vacuum, a change of ownership makes sense.

Unless Penn National wants to take its $1 billion-plus in "mad money" and go after Ameristar, there aren't too other many potential acquirers abroad in the land. James Packer has already sworn off. Pinnacle Entertainment would rather build than buy. Tribal giant Mohegan Sun has been flexing its financial muscle of late and rates as a longshot candidate (but just came off a wretched second quarter). Beyond that ... who knows?

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.

Case Bets: Orleans, El Cortez, Harrah's arena

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:34:00 -0700

I'm in the second day of stomach flu, so small portions are advisable ...

A "juice job" that followed two fatalities at The Orleans has come under federal scrutiny. In an unrelated development, Boyd Gaming board member Luther Mack has stepped down. Boyd says his seat will remain unfilled. Maybe he was irked by a rule change that requires a two-thirds vote of Boyd shareholders to call a special meeting, up from the former requirement of 50%. Maybe not. But with Boyd stock in the toilet (and unfairly so, IMO) it's a way to keep those unruly shareholders at bay.

El Cortez critiqued. $26 million of renovations were sufficient to lure City Life's Andrew Kiraly back to "the venerable El Cortez." He notes a significant winnowing-out of the slot floor, along with signs of still-in-progress work elsewhere. "The new carpet is bright, firm and strangely edible-looking," though, and "even the patrons seem to have a new spring in their skulk."

Don't be discouraged: Coming from the caustic Kiraly, this is an out-and-out rave.

If the Las Vegas Weekly's search engine weren't such and out-and-out frack-up, I'd be only too happy to point you toward a dispassionate, well-substantiated takedown of the dubiousness of piggybacking a sports arena onto Bally's Las Vegas. (One word: parking?) It's by Damon Hodge and well-worth reading ... if you can find it, that is. Hodge deserves better.

MTR in retreat

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:48:00 -0700

If MTR Gaming is still afloat today, it's almost certainly thanks to the fact that its two remaining casinos -- racinos in Chester, W.V., and Erie, Penn., enjoy oligopolistic market conditions where competitors are few and far between. A long piece outlines the dilemma faced by MTR. Hunker down and pay off debt, as outgoing CEO Edson "Ted" Arneault puts it, or try to aggressively fight back against a pincer movement from Pennsylvania.

Not only is nearby The Meadows racino (soon to be owned by James Packer) looming as an ever-greater threat, so too might Pittsburgh's slot parlor ... if Don Barden can ever get it finished, which looks doubtful. And MTR's flagship racino in Chester is little more than a slot barn -- if you don't believe me, check out the pictures. Even second-tier Las Vegas locals casinos have evolved beyond that point, which may explain why MTR was a dud in the Vegas market (well, that and the fact that competition isn't limited by statute), especially its failed tenure at Binion's. These guys just don't seem geared for intense, Vegas-style competition nor for casino-centric products.

Beyond the racinos, MTR's holdings have dwindled to a few small-staffed harness-racing tracks, which might be hard to unload. Since they're unprofitable, says a Moody's analyst, how much gain lies in selling them? A source tells me that promised infrastructure upgrades in Chester never materialized (even as revenue grew 33%) and that access to Mountaineer wasn't much more than a two-lane blacktop. Hard to compete with Pennsylvania, given those conditions. No wonder cash flow is off 34% in Chester.

Like Atlantic City, Mountaineer has an ace up its sleeve in the form of poker and other table games. Blackjack, craps and roulette are all played there (unlike Pennsylvania) and, without them, Mountaineer would probably very soon be toast. If MTR can hang onto that West Virginia table game oligopoly -- and maybe scrap the harness tracks -- it looks like it's got a good chance to survive, though not thrive.

Trop still taking. The Culinary Union informs me it chatted up Las Vegas Tropicana management back in May and "certainly haven't thrown in the towel ... As you know, there are major ownership/management changes going on there which is a transition that makes scheduling negotiations challenging." Management changes we knew about, but ownership ... now this is intriguing.

Jerry's Nugget, up in North Las Vegas, is still hanging tough with the Culinary, too, over a year after its contract elapsed. Small wonder the Culinary doesn't want to take on the case of the overworked Imperial Palace maids: It's having trouble closing all the deals already on its plate.

Hole-in-the-wall casinos reviewed

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:00:00 -0700

In the current City Life, Lissa Townsend Rodgers visits a few of Las Vegas' less publicized casinos, in search of $1 booze. The Gold Spike is lauded, provided your "goal is simply to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible as cheaply as possible," and don't mind the smelly/scary vibe that is uniquely the Spike's.

While the in-house brew at Ellis Island is pronounced "fairly meh," Rodgers follows with an impassioned ode to the casino's weekend karaoke nights. On such occasions, Ellis Island "becomes a hotbed of guys in fedoras and girls in their Friday night miniskirts, cramming the tiny, low-ceilinged lounge for karaoke, cheering each other through parodically impassioned versions of 'The Star Spangled Banner' and meandering-pitch renditions of 'Landslide.'" Still, I worry about the sense of fun of people whose idea of cutting loose is to sing the National Anthem.

Purty, yes. But good?

But Ellis Island comes off as a veritable Bellagio when contrasted with the Elardi family's Casino Royale. Or "a casino that's housed in a neon-trimmed faux-Victorian hideosity with a Denny's sticking out the side," as Rodgers describes it. Worse still are the margaritas, which she likens to a lime-flavored snow cone.

As long as we're plugging our favorite local alt-weekly, I'd be remiss in not *cough* plugging *cough* my reviews of And When Did You Last See Your Father? (a must for Jim Broadbent fans) and two Criterion reissues of films by Louis Malle. If that's your bag, as we used to say in the Seventies.

Barden: The comedy continues

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:53:00 -0700

Financing for Don Barden's stalled Pittsburgh casino remains, as ever, two weeks away. Barden's people say they'll have it by mid-July (conveniently, after the next meeting of Pennsylvania's gaming commission), they're "continuing to close" with Credit Suisse, and contractors are "very anxious to get back to work." I'll bet -- though not half as anxious as to get paid for work already done.

The Pittsburgh Courier also reports that Barden has already sold the Las Vegas Fitzgeralds for $35 million -- but there's mention of it either in online Clark County property records or in SEC filings by Barden's Majestic Star company. Hmmmmm.

Sold on the QT? Who knows?

As the farce along the riverfront continues to play out, Barden's proposal to drastically downsize the size and quality of Majestic Star Pittsburgh is playing to less-than-rave reviews. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl won't quite call it a bait-and-switch but others are not so reserved, with one saying, "We want what was approved."

Never at a loss for excuses, Barden's mouthpiece, Bob Oltmanns, contends that the 'slot parlor' would be up and running were it not for pesky litigation. The putative villains, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pirates, will have even greater reason to be vexed if Barden cuts back on riverfront access to Majestic Star, because that will mean that much more vehicular traffic tangling with motorists trying to get into or out of Heinz Field and/or PNC Park.

Then again, city and state officials were warned that access to Majestic Star could be very problematic indeed -- warnings they chose to ignore. If they don't like the barrel Don Barden's got them over, they've no one to blame but themselves.

Lady Luck deal in offing

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:08:00 -0700

On Wednesday, the Las Vegas City Council is scheduled to vote on an agreement that may finally re-start development of the long-defunct Lady Luck Hotel & Casino. As you may recall, the Henry Brent Co. planned to convert half the property into condos and keep the other half a hotel.

Foolishly, Brent closed down the whole kit 'n kaboodle, rather than renovating in stages. So long, cash flow. Not surprisingly, the project eventually ground to an agonizing halt, leaving downtown Las Vegas with one more eyesore, of which there was already no surfet.

Current owner CIM/LL Las Vegas has been presented with a laundry list of demands from the city, including at least $100 million in upgrades to the Lady Luck, ones which will make it theoretically commensurate with a three-star hotel. In return, the city will make various concessions, including bending the rules regarding "the placement of supergraphic and tall-wall signs." Three million dollars derived from said signage (over a 10-year period) will go to the so-called "Mob Museum" -- its full and fancy name is The Las Vegas Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement.

In return for getting the Ogden Garage from the city at a discounted rate (anywhere from 40% to 61% off its appraised value), CIM has to spend a half-million on upgrades. It also gets a big chunk of city land (again, at a discount), contingent on building a low-rise mix of retail, restaurants and nightclubs -- and, yes, maybe condos.

If CIM can't get started by New Year's Eve next or isn't "substantially" done two years later, all bets are off ... although I doubt the City of Las Vegas is going to want to revert to having yet another dark, half-finished Lady Luck looming in its midst. CIM may not be holding all the cards, but the city seems to be trying to make the best of a weak hand.

Turnaround for Lady Luck?

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:04:00 -0700

A reliable source sees some light at the end of the Lady Luck tunnel: "CIM took ownership of the timeshare property last Oct. as LL Timeshare. Just this month they're doing the individual deed assignments."

Don't get your hopes up for a big makeover of the Gold Spike, downtown's skankiest casino. However, some modest improvements are being requested, including improved fire sprinklers and "upgrading the restaurant," which would barely qualify as a lunch counter.

Gloom over Macao: Coverage of the Macao market has been initiated by Majestic Research and it's less than thrilled with what it found, including a April-May flattening of the mass-market sector. Also, the physical amount of play at Venetian Macao "is still below its share during its first few months of operation last year." (Guess the novelty factor has worn off.)

Game occupancy -- the number of positions in play -- is described as well below average ... 25% below average. Again, this may reflect the plopping of a casino behemoth onto the market, as opposed to rolling out its gargantuan new amounts of casino capacity in stages (and by that I don't mean a "soft opening"; Las Vegas Sands has had enough of those). "There continues to be very little play at The Venetian's high end mass market tables," the report concludes.

PBL Melco's Crown has "ramped significantly" in its mass market play, although it's now sacrificing some of that for VIP play "much of which occurs behind 'closed dooors,'" and therefore beyond Majestic's ability to measure.

Business at Wynn Macau, meanwhile, was observed to have "increased sharply" following the opening of nearby MGM Grand Macau. However, this doesn't cut both ways: "MGM's share of game usage has not ramped up since it opened. In fact, its share ... declined slightly each of the past few months."

Is Pansy Ho the instrument of Stanley Ho's revenge? Majestic reports that MGM made a brief dent in SJM's amount of play, but that Stanley Ho's fleet of decrepit casinos "rebounded sharply later in January and further increased following the opening of Ponte 16 in early February." Majestic does note some possible SJM market-share erosion in April and May, though.

Note: A contrasting, and sometimes complementary, first-hand report on Macao can be found at RateVegas.com. It's must-reading.

Blasts from the past

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:25:00 -0700

Snuggled inconspicuously in a recent El Cortez press release was the disclosure that the newly reconfigured ownership will include one Lonny Zarowitz. The aforesaid Zarowtiz figures briefly in John L. Smith's Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn.

Veteran investigative reporter Smith describes Zarowitz's father, Jerome, as a "mob frontman" who "retreated in style to Palm Springs" after cutting a March 23, 1973 deal with the Nevada Gaming Control Board "to approve his son Lonny as a percentage owner in the tiny Red Garter Casino." The younger Zarowitz had been previously turned down for a license to operate a slot route, Smith writes.

A former shift manager at the El Cortez, Zarowitz also held a tiny percentage of Gaughan's Exber Inc., and the two purportedly pursued an extremely contentious relationship in decades past, as detailed in a 1997 report by the New South Wales Casino Control Authority.

In 1992, it reads, Zarowitz accused Gaughan of past-posting in the El Cortez's race and sports book in 1986. However, since Zarowitz refused to provided the corroborating evidence he claimed to possess, the charges went nowhere.

Zarowitz was accused of sexual harassment by an El Cortez cocktail waitress in 1988 and was let go by the casino two years later, the document continues. He claimed the harassment complaint was a setup by Gaughan.

Reads the dossier: "Zarowitz made other allegations against Gaughan including that Gaughan was an FBI informant, that he had allegedly interfered with Zarowitz' mail and that Gaughan had conducted certain business transactions on less than an arms length basis ...

"Zarowitz has also alleged that Gaughan has been able to influence the Nevada Gaming Regulators, the local Police and the US Postal Service not to conduct proper investigations into Zarowitz' allegations regarding the 1986 race and sports book issue."

New South Wales regulators ultimately deemed Zarowitz lacking in credibility and Gaughan suitable for licensure, "but that he should be the subject of continued scrutiny." So how is it that a character like Zarowitz is going to wind up with a piece of the El Cortez, should the Nevada Gaming Commission approve the sale? I can think of several states where he wouldn't have a prayer.

Gone and forgotten: In the course of reviewing the brief life and troubled times of the Bourbon Street hotel-casino, I discovered that if it was not the least-loved Strip (or just-off-Strip) casino, it wasn't for lack of trying. On a more personal note, I recall Bourbon Street for having the tightest slots I've ever played in Vegas. So no love lost there, either.

Following Bourbon Street's 2006 implosion, the southwest corner of the site became popular hangout for vagrants and winos, as attested by an impressive pile of empty liquor bottles that accumulated there. To be fair, this was apparently not that much of a change from when Bourbon Street was still open, to judge by eyewitness reports found at RateLasVegas.com.

One of the favorable customer reviews recounts finding a drunken woman passed out on the barroom floor. Others describe being panhandled in the restrooms. Comments also include: "It is not uncommon to catch someone shooting up in the bathroom," "Had to give $20 deposit for a hair dryer," "beds held up by phone books" while yet another offers this ringing endorsement: "I suppose it would beat staying in your car."

Stupid TV Anchor Tricks: Subbing on Fox 5's morning news program, co-anchor Heidi Hayes was in the course of reporting a buyout attempt of Cirque du Soleil by Dubai World. Not to be left out, self-involved co-anchor Jason Feinberg butted into Hayes' litany of Cirque Strip shows by noisily adding Le Reve to the list.

Now, anybody with half a brain knows that while Le Reve may play like a parody of Cirque at its most homoerotic, it is (or was) a solo venture by Franco Dragone -- or as Steve Wynn infamously intoned, "A collection of imperfect dreams, created by Dragone." After three years and at least two makeovers, the non-Cirque-ness of Le Reve should be old and obvious news.

Send out the clowns: Incidentally, a trustworthy source recently viewed Le Reve 3.0 (you know, the version with ballroom dancing added) and says it's the best iteration so far. The clowns have reportedly been almost completely banished, which counts as progress any way you slice it.

Terrible news for Vegas

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:20:00 -0700

Comment is superfluous: This headline says it all. At least I won't have to explain anymore why I don't own a car.

Laughing my ... off

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:07:00 -0700

What's the best Vegas-related Web site? Too many too choose from, I say. But I'm definitively certain I've found the funniest. If you're a fan of CheapoVegas.com, you'll absolutely love its Casino Boy Graveyard. Yes, it's a stroll down memory lane past the tombstones of some of Vegas' best -- and worst -- casinos, which now only exist in our collective memory.

Pride of place is given to the Desert Inn, "the classiest place [Vegas] may ever see." But if you want laughs, nothing beats Casino Boy's incomparably pithy eulogies for those casinos whose demise is mourned only because we won't have them to kick around anymore. The Boardwalk, Key Largo and Westward Ho ... they're all here. (Boardwalk, with its demonic, leering Pennywise marquee, deserves a special circle in Casino Hell.)

Maybe the prize reminiscence of the bunch is Casino Boy's valediction for "the waiting room of the damned," Nevada Palace: "There are other smoky dumps in town, but this place out on Boulder Highway was like a magnet for locals who loved to stuff their mouths with four, five, six cigarettes at a time and have their oxygen tanks wired directly into their tracheotomy holes."

Just be sure not to visit this page while eating or drinking, lest you have a bad moment all over your keyboard.

Bargains? Shhhhhhhhhhhh!

Wed, 28 May 2008 13:24:00 -0700

Liz Benston takes a look today at the newest message from the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority and finds the LVCVA "thinks it's bad form to make references to 'affordable' and 'cheap.'" Oh yes, God forbid anybody should think there are deals to be found here (though there are) when they could spend that money closer to home, perhaps at one of the finer tribal casinos. Harrah's Entertainment has a nice one in SoCal, I hear.

UNLV's Prof. Jeff Voyles, says (in Benston's paraphrase) that "it would be disingenuous for Las Vegas to market itself as a bargain because room rates will bounce back and the Strip will be punctuated by expensive, high-rise hotels bargain seekers can little afford."

Yes, but that's partly how we got into our present pickle: by creating both the perception and the reality that the Strip isn't meant to be affordable anymore (which may account for the newfound market strength in Downtown, especially as Strip bargain plays bit the dust).

Las Vegas' newest bargain joint

Also, I don't mean to disrespect an academic -- the parlor sport of choice among the low-forehead types at the Dogpatch Daily -- but Voyles seems off base when he says, "We can't change our market segment based on a dip in the economy." Seems to me these are precisely the circumstances that would dictate a change in positioning. Principled talk of "sustaining the growth that we have" is fine (even though recent declines in gambling revenue and visitation make me want to ask, "What growth?"), but the bottom line -- so to speak -- involves putting fannies on slot stools and in poker chairs, to say nothing of hotel beds.

(MGM Mirage would seem to tacitly disagree with Voyles, seeing as it's just created the position of "President of Marketing-Customer Development. It'll be filled by Joe Brunini, whose brief will be to "identify emerging customer markets and create methods of attracting new audiences." My congratulations to Mr. Brunini, who started in the business as a dealer in Atlantic City 28 years ago.)

In this respect the Bad Timing Award goes (with our sincere condolences) to Sheldon Adelson, who unleashed 3,443 hotel rooms and suites on the Strip, in the Godzilla-size form of Palazzo. Now weekend rooms at Palazzo are going for $219/night. Adelson could scarcely have chosen a worse moment to flood the market with new capacity if he'd had a crystal ball.

While we're on the subject of marketing messages, what the heck went through the LVCVA's mind when it dreamt up the final panel of this:

"In crowd," "velvet ropes", "bottle service," "intrigue"? Isn't that the Pure Management Group scam-dal in seven words? Do these people read the papers or "the Internets"?

Nostradamus Dept.: In this little blast from the past, various prophetic utterances are made regarding the effects of an orgy of private-equity buyouts in the gaming sector, such as: "My fear is that they're going to look at casinos as an aggregate bunch of transactions and start coming up with proposals such as reducing labor on the F&B side or reducing marketing, or taking other steps to squeeze out more profitability." (Dennis Conrad)

Then there's, "Industry sources said that, if Station is purchased, the new company ... likely would put expansion projects on hold for at least 18 months until it paid down debt significantly." (author Bob Shemeligian)

Flash forward 18 months from the date of the article and all Station Casinos projects are on hold -- until early 2010, at least. That might not have been necessary if Station's top honchos hadn't insisted in lugging away over $420 million in swag as part of buying out their own company. As for the Conrad quote, it's a prescient précis of what customers say is going on at Harrah's.

R-J to Vegas: "We're Podunk"

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:16:00 -0700

Warning: The following blog post contains ridicule of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and a Republican senator with good hair. No actual copies of the R-J were harmed in the writing of this post.

*****

There I was, thinking that I was living in a (mostly) booming metropolis -- albeit going through one of its periodic "down" cycles. It's a city that's grown too fast for the infrastructure to keep pace; ditto "quality of life" necessities like parks, libraries and schools, of which we never seem able to build quite enough.

But these are symptoms of growth, as we draw not only a vast number of international visitors but myriad new residents as well (some of them here illegally, it's true). I don't see as many casino-employee name tags anymore of the sort that informed you your check-in clerk was Corazon from Manila, for instance, and that's a pity. They were a tacit tribute to the "Las Vegas dream" that's lured so many here from faraway climes, yours truly included.

So I look out my office window at the third (and counting) tower of the Palms, then turn to the electronic version of the Dogpatch Daily and read that, no, we are not a burgeoning city with a massive resort industry but "a remote desert town built to indulge Americans' fantasies." (I guess overseas fantasists need not apply.) And this from the paper's tourism correspondent! "Remote desert town"? "Indulge ... fantasies"? Did they send him to report on Pahrump by mistake?

And then, as if the Average Joe hadn't figured this out already, we get the thunderingly obvious observation, "Every extra dollar would-be tourists cough up at their hometown gas stations and grocery stores is a buck that won't be shoved into a slot machine, slipped to a hotel desk clerk in hopes of a room upgrade or tucked into a dancer's G-string this weekend."

Really? Ya think? Just maybe? Did you omit any clichés there, perhaps? Oh, and if anybody believes an "extra dollar" will be sufficient to get themselves a room upgrade, then their Vegas really isn't showing.

Add Sen. John Ensign (R-Shadow Creek) to the list of Las Vegans who seemingly hate Las Vegas. According to the Las Vegas Sun (which, unlike the Dogpatch Daily, has the mentality of a big-city newspaper), the exquisitely coiffed young senator "isn’t convinced Nevada needs [Congressional] money to handle the hepatitis C crisis." Translation: If you're among the estimated 15,000 people who can't afford a $200 hepatitis test, drop dead.

Other items the Sun says Ensign found "offensive" were 13-week extensions of unemployment benefits and home-heating subsidies for poor people (during a recession, fer crissakes!). “I have always been very consistent about caring about our children and our grandchildren," crocodile-wept the well-heeled Circus Circus heir. Yeah, it's just their parents and grandparents -- some of whom probably used to work for your dad -- about whom you can't give a rat's ass.

Ensign's also against the Webb version of the GI Bill (as opposed to the competing McCain one) because its financial assistance to former servicemen and -women "would actually weaken our military because it encourages people to get out."

Ah, so that's how we keep our military strong: Not by incentivizing people to serve but by essentially throwing them from the train when they choose to leave. Brilliant! "Re-enlist or face poverty." Heckuva job, Brownie, er, John.

Although I'm not a Republican, the elephant party would have surely done better in '06 and would be more fearsome this year if they had more plain-spoken, principled representatives and candidates like New Jersey's Murray Sabrin. He and I would never agree on environmental issues or the Brady Bill, for instance, but I sure like the cut of his jib, as the saying goes. (His Iraq policy, which boils down to "We won; let's leave," would find a lot of takers, too.)

Check out the audio excerpts, in which Sabrin gets right to the point while opponent Dick Zimmer hems, haws and obfuscates like the Washington hack he is. Sabrin probably won't make it past the primary, which is too bad because he has the makings of a terrific candidate, and would have considerable appeal to Libertarians and proverbial "swing voters." But if you liked George W. Bush you'll love Dick Zimmer.

Quote of the Day

Wed, 14 May 2008 14:06:00 -0700

"The Strip has done phenomenally well, but I think there's a segment of the population that's kind of getting ignored, the value-conscious customer who really can't afford the kind of pricing the Strip offers these days." -- Binion's and Four Queens owner Terry Caudill.

A call to action

Thu, 01 May 2008 11:12:00 -0700

Remember that editorial about construction safety (or the obvious lack thereof) that I said the Las Vegas Sun ought to be writing -- as opposed to printing a jeremiad about the Miley Cyrus photo flap? Well, it's been written ... but not in or by the Sun, but rather by a man who knows the commercial building inside out, Tony Illia. He says what needs to be said. As he puts it, "the price of life is being determined daily on Las Vegas Strip."

Remember when the State Dept. was looking askance at Macao for acting as a laundromat for dirty money, particularly from crazy Kim Jong-Il? Now it's the turn of the Philippines, whose 15 government-owned casinos have been designated a money-launderer's paradise. Pagcor has never had a sparkling reputation and the vast Philippine archipelago is rife with terrorists, rebels and kidnappers. So this unholy nexus of government, suspect cash and myriad evildoers does much to explain why U.S. casino operators give the Philippines a wide berth as they attempt to penetrate virtually every other major market in the Pacific Rim.

The wait is over. In the unlikely event you were anticipating my appraisal of Tom Breitling's Double or Nothing, it's to be found in the new issue of City Life. Let's put it this way: Jack Sheehan was Breitling's initial co-author but Cal Fussman finished the job and gets the credit. Sheehan was the luckier of the two.

Did he or didn't he?

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:41:00 -0700

While I'm somewhat skeptical of the claims of Richard Suen, vis-a-vis his relationship with Las Vegas Sands, if he wins his lawsuit in Clark County District Court, he'll probably have Sands executives to thank for it. They've been tripping over their shoelaces in court testimony. William Weidner's latest gambit has been to say that Suen didn't earn his dough. Which would seem to implicitly concede that he had a valid agreement with Sands.

Suen's case probably isn't being helped by an attorney who confuses cash flow with profit. And Weidner outfoxes him on whether Sands is making a profit in Macao. Sands' performance on the stand has been maladroit and this case still looks like it could go either way, thanks mainly to a few own-goals scored by the home team.

More readers' gripes: A Californian follows up on another reader's suggestion for an inventory of gripes about niggling casino thrift moves, inspired by Harrah's Entertainment's suspension of Las Vegas Review-Journal sales. The newly submitted grievances are ...

"1. the Hard Rock stopped serving Guinness at the tables.

2. when Barbary Coast changed over to [Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon], they took out their double-deck blackjack tables and replaced them with 6:5 single deck. therefore, I no longer play there, and I play at limits that they would actually care about.

3. Venetian moving their valet stand into the garage. and it's always full now. less likely to go there. good thing they have Palazzo now for easier (emptier) parking.

4. I'm comped at Red Rock Resort] so it doesn't really matter to me, but if I had to pay their nightly $20 "resort fee" I'd stay somewhere else just on principle.

5. Red Rock won't comp decent scotch at the tables. Talking about anything better than a $30 bottle. You'd have to do a hard comp which is silly.

6. Red Rock's gift shop closes. it can't cost that much to staff the place overnight, and that's a convenience that any hotel should have. Need some advil or antacid or something at 2 AM? too bad.

7. Monte Carlo's brewpub stopped being a 'brew' pub. Was nice having something different back there, I used to go there all the time.

8. Harrahs rerouting everything so you have to walk through that stupid fake-Mardi Gras thing just to walk down the street. I can't stand it there, and make it a point to cross the street rather than walk through White Trash Land. Friends feel the same way.

9. everything that Binions has done since they stopped being the Horseshoe."

On that last point, Terry Caudill promises that help is on the way. As for refusing to serve Guinness to table game players? That's just ... perverse.

A reader's suggestion

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:36:00 -0700

... and, no, it isn't that I perform anatomical impossibilities on myself.

Rather, one of LVA's faithful "Question of the Day" readers suggests we run a poll or forum topic (or maybe both) on niggling little subtractions from Vegas casino floors which might save a few bucks on the bottom line but which detract from the guest-service experience -- traditionally one of the casino industry's strongest links.

Such false economies could include the closing of the Las Vegas Club's sports book, the reported removal of the shoeshine stand from the Gold Coast, Harrah's Entertainment's cessation of single-copy sales of the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Steve Friess reports that Harrah's may done a lot more than that) or the Tropicana's ... well, you could fill a whole column with what the Tropicana has discontinued (seven things occur to me off the top of my head).

Any other suggestions? My personal peeve is the closing of the IMAX theater at Luxor, a place where I dropped a fair amount of $$. Given the number of movies in rotation at any point, repeat visits were an absolute must. Now it will give way to two funerary exhibits (Titanic and Bodies) for which one visit apiece is probably sufficient.* It may be the more remunerative course for Luxor to take, but it blows all the same.

* -- One visit to Bodies would actually be one too many for me, but others find it less ghoulish and more fascinating.

Komodo Dragons at Mandalay Bay! Well, one Komodo Dragon. But one is a 100% improvement on none. Besides, if you dropped off your tax forms at M'Bay on April 15, you got free Shark Reef tix, which are good through June 30 ... meaning that you've got 11 days to see Mr. Dragon gratis, from his June 20 debut onwards.

That's all for today. Not that there isn't a ton of news worth reporting (the Adelson vs. Richard Suen throwdown, the ongoing OSHA controversy, more Columbia Sussex craziness, just for starters) but other responsibilities at LVA take priority at the moment. But that means expanded LasVegasAdvisor.com content will be yours sooner rather than later.

Golden Gate update

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:34:00 -0700

Per a previous item about the Golden Gate's plan to remake itself as a boutique hotel, I wondered about the status of its Culinary Union contract. Not to worry: According to the union's political director, Pilar Weiss, the two parties inked a new labor pact in February (boy, do I feel like Rip van Winkle), so Golden Gate co-owner Mark Brandenburg can presumably set sail beneath a cloudless sky, as far as his remake plans are concerned.

Now that the Gate, the Golden Nugget, the Four Queens and (coming soon) Binion's are presenting shiny new faces to downtown, the pressure will be on Boyd Gaming and perennial laggard Tamares Group to provide a spiffier product. Boyd always knows what time it is but I'm not sure Tamares could even find a clock if its life depended on it, at least where casinos are concerned.