Our first call was to the reservation desk at the Plaza Hotel. They acknowledged that the Las Vegas Club is not taking hotel bookings (itself a noteworthy occurrence, as in the past we've had phone operators there speak and act is if nothing had changed, when in fact the only rooms available are at the sister property -- much like the Binion's/Four Queens scenario) but gave no indication that its rooms were under new ownership. Then we tracked down Plaza PR representative Michele Voelkening, who said "There is no truth to it."
The hotel rooms at the Vegas Club were closed in 2013, at which time a renovation was "hinted" but failed to materialize. The hotel-casino is one of a half-dozen gaming-entitled properties that Lichtenstein-based conglomerate Tamares Group bought in 2005 as part of a large real estate play in downtown Las Vegas.
Of the six, two were sold (the Gold Spike and the Queen of Hearts), with the Gold Spike ceasing to be a casino and the Queen of Hearts subsequently demolished. One, the Nevada Hotel, was closed. Another, the Western, was closed and then sold. That leaves Tamares with the Plaza Hotel and the attenuated version of the Vegas Club. The Plaza is the only casino property that Tamares has renovated. Tamares has many, many other business concerns, ranging from fiber optics to biopharmaceuticals. Las Vegas has been, at best, a sporadic – and erratic – blip on its radar screen. The uncertain fate of the Las Vegas Club is symptomatic of a Sin City strategy that just didn’t pan out for them.
