Recently I was visiting downtown and was walking by the offices of the Granite Gaming Group, the former owners of Glitter Gulch, Mermaids and Le Bayou. The offices appeared to be vacant and I was wondering, did Derek Stevens buy the whole company or just the businesses they ran downtown? Do they own any other business or gambling interests in Nevada?
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
The Granite properties were initially purchased by Steve Burnstine, the group’s CEO, from his father Herb Pastor in 2006.
Subsequently, according to news stories, Burnstine “forged a good working relationship” with Derek Stevens and was excited about the prospects of the developing the properties to further the reinvention of downtown.
However, Burnstine sold the properties outright to Stevens in May of last year and they were closed on June 27. Both Mermaids and La Bayou were demolished to make room for an as-yet-undisclosed Stevens project that will also encompass the defunct — but still standing — Las Vegas Club.
We called Granite Gaming Group and its phone has been disconnected.
We also did a public-records search via the Gaming Control Board and according to the “Where Account Appears on Licensing Report” statement, reproduced below, Granite Gaming only ever had three licenses, one each for Mermaids and LaBayou, and Mermaids also had a distributors license (for some reason). All three licenses were removed on 6/27/16, the same day the two casinos closed. Obviously, Granite had no intention to stay in the gambling business after that day.
Mermaids and La Bayou employees were offered “priority interview opportunities” for new jobs at the D and Golden Gate. We don’t know how that turned out, but Granite employees who were hired no doubt found that working for Stevens was an upgrade, at least if one former Granite floor manager is to be believed. He/she posted on Glassdoor job-search website, “No pay raises for management .... ever. If you want to make $35k a year for the rest of your life, this is the place to work. Although profits are high, all employees are not treated like they belong to a successful business.”
In any event, Granite Gaming is no longer even a business.
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Timothy Hiller
May-26-2017
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