A:
No.
It's true that Harrah's owns a contiguous stretch of east-side center Strip real estate, from its namesake casino past Imperial Palace, O'Shea's, and the Flamingo, then skipping over the Barbary Coast to Bally's and Paris, including acreage behind the Barbary Coast on E. Flamingo Road. Harrah's has been on a buying spree in the past several years and now owns enough land to do just about anything it wants, which includes three megacasinos, a single metaresort, or even paving a 100-acre parking lot.
A recent story in the Las Vegas Sun hints, however, that Harrah's plans might not be as ambitious and groundbreaking, so to speak, as they could be, given all that property. Harrah's CEO, Gary Loveman, told resporter Jeff Simpson that the casino giant will employ signs, the Total Rewards players club, and even mobile communication technologies to "create a sense of place" similar to Disneyland. He also said that on the east side, Harrah's, the Flamingo, and Paris will not be replaced; Imperial Palace will; Bally's could go either way (though we predict it'll go, period). The Boyd Group's Barbary Coast is a plum that Loveman covets; he said he might buy the casino outright, swap properties with Boyd, or buy Boyd outright.
Finally, Loveman claimed that details of the plans will be revealed "by the end of the summer." Rest assured that when they are, we'll let you know about them.
Update 18 April 2008
No details were ever revealed to local media, although in Christina Binkley's
Winner Takes All: Steve Wynn, Kirk Kerkorian, Gary Loveman, and the Race to Own Las Vegas (Whew!), it is disclosed that "Loveman was planning a giant resort that he claimed would change the 'gestalt' in Las Vegas. Its working name was Epicentre." Various ideas -- some rather eccentric -- were tossed about before Loveman settled upon a $13 billion, 10-year plan to erect 10 hotel towers, "including new casinos designed to cater to Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers
"At the development's center, Loveman decided to build an avenue leading from the Strip into the deep interior of Harrah's property ... In effect, it would create a new Main Street, where Harrah's would control every shop, restaurant, hotel, condominium building and theater in the whole destination ... "
Wall Street reacted badly to rumors about the project, Harrah's stock fell and Loveman arranged a private-equity buyout of Harrah's by Apollo Management and Texas Pacific Group. Unfortunately, Harrah's debt load greatly increased as a result of the buyout, at a time when Wall Street cooled toward Las Vegas investments. So Epicentre appears to have moved quietly to the back burner, at least until such time as the capital markets loosen their purse strings again.
As for the Barbary Coast, Harrah's acquired the property through a complicated buy-and-trade deal with Boyd Gaming, in October 2006. Boyd got, among other things, the Westward Ho site, and the Barbary Coast was re-branded Bill's Gamblin' Hall.
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