Making good on a promise and a plan, Station Casinos offloaded 21 acres next to Durango Station (ab0ve) last week for $24 million. Not a bad score. The buyer is Ovation Development Corp., which will help seed Durango’s customer base by building residential properties on the adjoinging site, just as Station hoped. Ovation, an offshoot of the Molasky family of companies, is also building senior-friendly housing right behind Sunset Station. In the now-distant past, Station would try to shop vast tracts of land at one great gulp but didn’t find takers. Its new, more-selective, bite-size strategy is working, as seen at Wildfire Fremont, Durango and Sunset. Next up, Cactus Lane, where Station has much more land than it needs, having doubled down on its real estate position there recently. We still think it’s quixotic to go up against South Point but it will be very interesting to watch.
Having sacked and pillaged Caesars Entertainment infamously, Apollo Management told Nevada regulators it had learned its lesson and would be a better steward of Venelazzo. Has the Apollo leopard really changed its spots? Seems not. We haven’t heard anything untoward coming out of Sheldon Adelson‘s old place (yet) but Apollo’s attempt to merge the Kroger and Albertsons supermarket chains is turning out to be classic private equity rapine. You think grocery prices are bad now? Wait til this deal goes through. It hasn’t even closed yet and Apollo is strip-mining both companies. Albertsons announced a $4 billion “special dividend” on Nov. 7—a sum 57 times larger than the regular quarterly dividend, depleting the chain’s $2.5 billion cash on hand and saddling it with $1.5 billion in additional debt. Moody’s Investor Service accordingly downgraded Albertsons credit rating. There goes one-third of Albertsons’ market cap—along with the ability to “meaningfully compete” with Kroger and others.
Continue reading Durango deal done; Apollo snows NV regulators (again)
