In July 2014, Tropicana Entertainment sold the River Palms to Nevada Restaurant Services – owner of the Dotty’s chain – for $6.75 million in cash. On its way out, Tropicana laid off all 271 River Palms employees. NRS promised to hold a series of job fairs for the newly dispossessed workforce and eventually staffed the hotel-casino back up to 200-plus members of the previous workforce. "What companies often find is staff people who are great employees but who have never had the opportunity to elevate to a management position," said general manager Steve DesChamps at the time. He also planned to make housekeeping staff a regular part of the casino’s workforce, whereas Tropicana had outsourced it in the past.
Initially, NRS planned a seven-week shutdown and remodeling. However, it scrapped those plans in response to downbeat feedback from employees, many of whom chose to help renovate and clean the property in order to keep working. Instead, NRS closed the property for just three weeks, beginning on Sept. 5, opting to remodel on the go in many cases.
At 2 p.m., September 26, the River Palms reopened the Laughlin River Lodge -- without a gaming license -- part of a "soft" reopening that was ramping up to a Nov. 1 grand reopening … with gambling. Changes included renovations to hotel rooms on floors six through 13 of the main hotel tower. These were refitted with flat-screen TVs and, according to the Laughlin Nevada Times, "free high speed Internet access and an amenity package that includes a refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker, iron and ironing board and complimentary snacks." That last item isn’t something that you get at the average hotel, where even inadvertently nudging a bottle of water in your minibar can end up costing you five bucks.
The south-wing tower and its 300 rooms remain closed. In the main, 25-story tower, rooms which didn’t receive a full makeover "were deep-cleaned and freshened up," DesChamps tells LVA. Why not a wider renovation? "That market is notoriously depressed in what you can charge on a room." Weekend occupancy is described as "nice but not necessarily sold out," while midweek bookings are "incredibly slow."
Two Dotty’s micro-casinos were installed (the River Lodge still eschews table games), and the public areas were redone in a the same rustic style that's promised for the Hacienda/Hoover Dam Lodge and that DesChamps characterized to the Times as "mountain lodge." ("The interior of the building will be re-designed using heavy timber, barn wood, river rock and earth tones," promised the Laughlin newspaper.) The old Club 2700 made way for one of the Dotty’s slot parlors. The lower casino floor, however, remains in the dormant state in which Tropicana left it and there are no plans for the area right now.
The hotel seems to have lagged in its timeline for reopening, as the exterior was yet to be repainted on Dec. 2, months after the grand-opening deadline had passed. The buffet was shut down not long after its Sept. 26 reopening, with NRS announcing that a renovation was in the works.
Among the issues impeding the River Lodge was that, before the grand reopening could take place, it had hit a patch of bad business, with gambling revenue in Laughlin falling 5 percent in October. Across-the-board layoffs, consuming 10 percent of the workforce, took place in late November. "To the best of our ability, we kept everybody busy over the summer doing lots of things and we were glad to do that. Once we opened up, the gaming was solid but it's not been solid enough to overcome the shortfalls on the hotel, and somewhat on the food and beverage side. We're just not getting the occupancy we need to make those parts of our division able to pay all that payroll," DesChamps told the Times.
"I apologized up front to each and every one of them, saying these things around the holidays are extremely tough. We did give everyone three weeks of severance pay to try and get them through the majority of the holiday season and know they can pay their bills through that point in time. … Every one of them has a note in their file that they are eligible for re-hire."
DesChamps says business picked up in January and "we did a modest number of hires [as] business has continued to accelerate," especially gambling, and food and beverage. Some laid-off personnel could not be called back as they’d been absorbed by other Laughlin hotels. Biz is also improving "week over week and month over month" at the two Dotty’s, which will be adding "grab-and-go kind of food" (think hamburgers and hot dogs).
The Lodge Steakhouse menu has been revised and the buffet is now open on weekends. DesChamps describes its new incarnation as focusing on pizza, pasta, soups and salads rather than the more difficult, all-encompassing type of buffet menu. The former Italian-restaurant space is still in limbo, however. NRS is pondering some new construction, potentially filling the hole between the first and second casino floors with a mezzanine area.
"The areas that the public can see are in a completed state," says DesChamps, with incomplete ones hidden behind temporary walls. As for that outside paint job, it’s now about halfway done, encompassing principally the Nevada-facing side of the property and the parking garage. The Arizona-facing facade is more problematic to do, as the contractor is described as being very cautious about the conditions in which he sends his crew up. Laments DesChamps, "The gosh-darn wind blows through every day," impeding progress. But at least there is progress.
