Question of the Day - 21 March 2024

Second question first: Since Circa is privately owned, details of its financial performance are unavailable.

However, all external indicators point toward a very successful property. Not only has the downtown casino district been performing better overall since Circa debuted, but it was welcomed by its ostensible rivals as the rising tide that would lift all boats. Co-owners Derek and and his younger brother Greg Stevens have continued an expansive program of upgrading, enhancing, and promoting Circa, which enjoys consistently favorable media and a high profile.

Derek is the public face of the enterprise and was born in Detroit on Sept. 17, 1967, the son of an architect (John) and a schoolteacher (Betty). The family moved to Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where Derek attended high school, playing football and baseball. In a distant echo of this, he subsequently owned the Las Vegas 51s minor-league baseball franchise from 2008 to 2013.

He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and got an  MBA at Detroit’s Wayne State University. 

Detroit is a recurring theme in Stevens’ biography. He held his first job there, as a valet. Simultaneously, he became a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, setting up the Motown/downtown polarity that characterizes his life to this day.

Around 1993, Stevens took over the Cold Heading Co., a manufacturer of auto parts founded by his grandfather. Under Derek’s direction, it expanded into Indiana and Ohio and formed the basis of the fortune he subsequently invested in Sin City.

In fact, Stevens’ tenure at Cold Heading coincided with his branching out into Las Vegas businesses. Nevada attracted him not only for its glamor, but also its no-income-tax status. He amassed a million shares in Riviera Holdings, a position that he eventually liquidated to the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, which in turn liquidated the Riviera.

While Stevens played the market in terms of Las Vegas Strip casinos, he lacked the financial firepower to develop a casino in that difficult and sometimes treacherous space. His eye instead fell on downtown, with its lower threshold of financial entry.

He and Greg started with an investment in the Golden Gate in 2008, then snapped up the fiscally and physically tattered Fitzgeralds in 2011. The duo rebranded it The D (believed to be an allusion to Derek himself and Detroit) and restored its luster, not least by their promotion of cult game Sigma Derby (the only remaining one in Las Vegas). 

Demonstrating that his commitment to downtown ran beyond gambling, Stevens bought real estate from the Clark County Courthouse and reinvented it as the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center. He was also laying the groundwork for his magnum opus, Circa.

In order to create his first ground-up casino, Stevens began by buying up the Las Vegas Club (2015) and Mermaids and Girls of Glitter Gulch (2016). Over a five-year period culminating in late 2020, Stevens and his brother leveled the aging acquisitions and erected big-ticket Circa, which became known for its vast sports book and rooftop Stadium Swim.

Married to grade-school sweetheart Nicole Parthum, Stevens has three children and still calls Michigan home, although he doesn’t care to develop casinos in Detroit for a variety of reasons. He’s also dabbled in Nevada politics, despite (perhaps wisely) resisting the siren song of elective office. In the 2018 gubernatorial race, he hedged his bets between Democrat Steve Sisolak and Republican Adam Laxalt. He later transferred his allegiance fully to Sisolak, against whom he declined to run in 2022. (Joe Lombardo did so successfully.)

The higher-profile Stevens brother, a frequent sight on the casino floor, has endeared himself to the Average Joe. He's been known to honor bets for sporting contests with disputed outcomes and made the George gesture of giving away 1,700 airfares to Las Vegas during COVID and its ensuing Sin City crisis.

At 56, Stevens is still young by Las Vegas CEO standards and, beyond the expansion of his Circa Sports franchise, he’s keeping mum about his grand plan for the next decade or so, although he’s certainly become a major mover, shaker, and general influencer in Las Vegas. Whatever he does in the years to come will bear watching, just as his career to date has abundantly done.