Ah, the memories of old-time Las Vegans: certainly fanciful, if not exactly accurate. In fact, about the only thing George got right was the dance hall on the mezzanine.
This property on Main Street a couple blocks from the Plaza opened in 1977 as the Park Hotel. Being a bit too far off the beaten path, it managed to last around 10 years, before closing. As soon as it did, city officials started a search for someone to take it over and wound up with Bob Snow, who’d developed and owned the popular Church Street Station entertainment complex in Orlando.
Church Street applied an innovative concept when it opened in the 1970s, charging a single admission to multiple nightclubs spanning both sides of Church Street and the nearby railroad tracks. Disney World later copied the formula when it opened its Pleasure Island club district.
Snow’s short sojourn in Las Vegas is a sad strange saga with all kinds of alleged shenanigans involving the City, Jan Jones (mayor at the time), the downtown casino cartel, eminent domain, taxpayer funding of private projects, collusion by Bank of America Arizona, and the hubris of Snow himself.
But the upshot was that the City helped Snow buy the Park with $17 million in taxpayer funds; he also invested upwards of $50 million of his own money to renovate the property with a Victorian theme, hardwood floors and wall paneling, very expensive antiques, two railroad cars that served as a restaurant and bar, a Rosie O’Grady’s theme in the casino, and a nightclub complex on the second floor.
Main Street Station opened on August 30, 1991, at a final cost of $82 million. Problems beset the place from the start. The blame is generally laid on Snow: He overextended himself; he didn’t know enough about the casino business; his price points were way too high for downtown Las Vegas; the hotel rooms were old and unattractive.
But the location continued to haunt the place. And conspiracy theorists have a field day with the rest of the story, which we’ll leave to them.
Whatever the cumulative causes, by year’s end, Snow had declared bankruptcy. Main Street Station limped along till Bank of America Arizona foreclosed and shut it down in June 1992, barely 10 months after opening.
Snow tried to keep his investment alive, casting a net far and wide for partners and investors. Debbie Reynolds and her husband, businessman Richard Hamlett, committed to putting up $500,000 in cash and to build a $1 million museum for Reynolds’ collection of movie costumes. Reynolds agreed to perform at the museum attraction, and the name of the hotel-casino was planned to be changed to Debbie Reynolds’ Main Street Station. (Reynolds and Hamlett moved on to pursue the same plan at their eventual property on Convention Center Drive.)
About a year later, the bank sold Main Street Station to Boyd Gaming for a bargain basement $16.5 million. Boyd took a few months to get around to reopening it, then ran it for a few years, till investing $45 million to remodeling to in 1996. They tricked out the buffet, turned the Triple 7 brewpub into a happening hangout, and built a pedestrian overpass to connect it to its California property closer to the action of Fremont Street.
However, even today, nearly 20 years after Bob Snow came and went, the look and feel, and a few of the antiques, that he introduced to the property remain.
