Question of the Day - 07 February 2021

Number 1 Main Street is ground zero for the founding of Las Vegas; it also divides north, south, east, and west in the city’s street-numbering system. This was the site of the 1905 railroad auction where modern Las Vegas was born. Here, at the head of Fremont Street, stood the Spanish-style train depot for the Central, then Union, Pacific Railroad for more than 60 years, surrounded by various metal and welding shops, engine-repair buildings, and a roundhouse on 63 acres of prime real estate owned by the railroad.

In 1970, longtime downtown casino operators Sam Boyd and Jackie Gaughan, along with then-Senator Howard Cannon, partnered in building a $20 million 500-room hotel at 1 Main Street, appropriately calling it the Union Plaza. The hotel opened at the stroke of midnight July 2, 1971. The grand-opening party is remembered to this day as the biggest champagne bash, up to that time, in Las Vegas history; more than 10,000 visitors showed up to see the new joint on its first day in operation.

From day one, Las Vegas’ Amtrak station was at the back of the Union Plaza, connected to the hotel. It was the only train station in the United States located in a casino, till Amtrak discontinued its Desert Wind train route in 1997.

The Union Plaza opened the first race and sports book in a Las Vegas casino in 1975, less than a year after Nevada passed a law allowing it. Jackie Gaughan at the Plaza is widely credited as pioneering race and sports betting at casinos (along with Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal at the Stardust).

A 26-story 526-room tower was added in 1983, giving the Union Plaza the 1,035 or so rooms it still has today.

In 1990 Jackie Gaughan bought out his partners and changed the name of the hotel-casino to Jackie Gaughan’s Plaza.

Jackie Gaughan’s Plaza made a name for itself in a number of ways. Its Center Stage Restaurant, in a second-floor glassed-in dome in the front of the building, was a great bargain-gourmet steakhouse with one of the best views in town. The film Back to the Future Part II used the Plaza as a model for its dystopian Biff’s Casino. In the 1994 movie version of The Stand, Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic horror fantasy, the Plaza played a key role as the headquarters of Randal Flagg, a recurring villain in King’s fiction. In the 1995 movie Casino, Sharon Stone and Robert De Niro argue over missing money in the Center Stage. In the 2000 movie Pay It Forward, a scene with Kevin Spacey was also filmed in the Center Stage. In the 2001 movie The Mexican, the two main characters, Samantha and Winston, stay at the Plaza. Its appearances on TV shows and in music videos are way too numerous to list.

In 2004, Gaughan sold the Plaza, along with three other downtown casinos, to Barrick Gaming for $82 million. Barrick announced huge plans to redevelop the aging Plaza, but little more than a year later, the company ceded control of the Plaza to majority owner Tamares Group, which owns it still.

The Plaza's rooftop pool is noteworthy, with its food truck for dining options and 12 pickleball courts, the most at any hotel-casino in town. The Plaza also boasts the Core Arena, the only equestrian center downtown, along with three 21-story murals on the hotel towers, among the largest murals in the world on a single building. Only in the past few weeks, the Plaza unveiled its new Wheel of Fortune Slots Zone, a 2,900-square-foot space dedicated exclusively to Wheel of Fortune slots, the only such space that we know of.

The Plaza's CEO, Jonathan Jossel, is, believe it or not, a gambler. Not in the sense that he plays casino games (we don't know whether he does or not), but he seems to like to take chances on what we'd call somewhat unconventional marketing campaigns. The latest implementation is an 850-square-foot slot area dubbed "Brian Christopher Slots at the Plaza." The machines all have a QR code that links to a video of Christopher, the biggest name in slot machine YouTube influencers, playing the same game. As, um, unlikely as it seems to us that someone who videotapes himself playing the bandits can garner a rabid following of a half-million YouTube viewers, when Christopher appeared on the Plaza's podcast and made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that he should have his own slot room there, Jossel and his team ran with it. And it appears to be successful, at least so far.

Every so often, rumors surface that its days are numbered, but so far, the Plaza continues to anchor downtown Las Vegas. And we say, given that it sits at ground zero, hosted the first sports book in a casino, has been featured on countless screens large and small, has the equestrian center, murals, WoF and Christopher slot rooms, and continually experiments with gambling promotions and marketing schemes, it's not that much of a surprise that it put on a New Year's Eve fireworks show when no other casino would.