What can we say, except "One man’s trash is another man’s treasure"? Far be it from us to characterize the Peppermill or any of the humbler businesses along the Las Vegas Strip as "low-class shops." If you’re Joe Blow, souvenir-shop owner, you really don’t need to "justify" your annual profits to anyone but yourself. Who’s to say your tchotchke shop isn’t "worthwhile" or that what replaces it would constitute an upgrade? After all, there may be people out there who preferred the old Boardwalk hotel-casino (even if its giant clown head reminded some of Pennywise in Stephen King’s It) to the urban density of CityCenter, which is now arising in its stead.
Also, determining the highest and best use of land is a subjective process and, if placed in the hands of government, is wont to lead to eminent-domain actions. The City of Las Vegas has gone that route and had years of bitter legal wrangling to show for it. As for the value of the land, as our managing editor likes to say, the only true measurement is what you can get for it on the open market. Which is to say: It’s all over the place.
Before swapping it to Boyd Gaming for the Barbary Coast (now called Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall), Harrah’s Entertainment paid $18.4/acre million for the land that once held the Westward Ho and its sister property, the Ho. (Yes, it really was called that.) However, the intervening strip of land, without which Boyd could not connect the Stardust and Westward Ho parcels, sold for a mere $9.6 million an acre –- 48% less. Real estate analyst John Restrepo told the Las Vegas Business Press, "Maybe the guy who owned the nine acres was more desperate to sell. Maybe [he] just needed the cash."
If some are desperate to sell, others are desperate to own. Five months after the Westward Ho/Barbary Coast deal, New Frontier owner Phil Ruffin sold his casino and most of the underlying land for $36 million/acre to El Ad Properties, a company hot to get into the Vegas market. Ruffin now says that, had he waited as little as two more months to sell, he probably couldn’t have gotten as much. So the only way to get a cold, hard evaluation of your piece of the Strip is to hang out the "For Sale" sign and wait for the offers to flood or trickle in, depending on the mood of the market and the buyers.
