OK, I was wrong. Incredibly wrong. As you’ll hear on the next Vegas Gang podcast, I stuck by my prediction that Kansas‘ largest casino contract, the one for the greater Kansas City area, would go to Mohegan Sun. Why? Biggest budget, most amenities, a track record of large-scale casino development. At least I covered my butt by saying that Cordish Cos.‘ piggybacking of their proposed casino onto the Kansas Speedway gave them “dark horse” status. Also, franchising the casino under the Hard Rock brand was not to be gainsaid.
A racino of a different stripe
So when the winner was announced today, Cordish was it. While Mohegan Sun was willing to put a bigger investment ($740 million vs. Cordish’s $680 million) on the table, Cordish’s synergy with the Speedway appears to have done the trick. They’ll whip up a temporary casino (2K slots, 75 tables) sometime next year, to get the cash flowing while the full-scale project rolls toward a 2011 debut.
Here’s the real shocker: Mohegan Sun got zero votes, primarily because state consultants projected its revenues as the lowest of the three proposals remaining on the table. (Pinnacle Entertainment and Las Vegas Sands has already withdrawn from the fray. With a major project underway outside St. Louis, plus others in holding patterns in Atlantic City and Baton Rouge, Pinnacle’s chances seemed remote. It’s difficult to imagine Kansas being willing to take a place at the back of that queue.)
Which means that three of the seven votes went to — surprise! — Golden Gaming, a company whose chances I will freely admit to having severely undersold. It says a lot for CEO Blake Sartini‘s reputation and for Golden’s presentation that it came within an ace of winning, despite having a relatively modest track record — at least nothing remotely approaching the $662 million casino it proposed to build. With Penn National having sulked its way clear out of Cherokee County and the Kansas lottery board starting to display skepticism toward the Ford County bidders, Golden has at least one, maybe two more opportunities it could pursue in the Sunflower State.
Ten months ago, at the time its casino empire was starting to collapse, Columbia Sussex announced that it had sold the Horizon Vicksburg to casino investor Nevada Gold for $35 million. Seems now that it’s yet another William J. Yung III transaction that’s (pardon the pun) gone south, following the cancellation of the sale of Casino Aztar to Eldorado Resorts.
Juding from the language that ColSux successor Tropicana Entertainment “have been in discussions regarding a possible alternative transaction” without avail, it appears as though new CEO Scott Butera wants to hang onto the riverboat property (whose on-shore facilities are leased, not owned, by the way — a common ColSux practice). “(N)o alternatives exist that are suitable to both parties” sounds like a nice way of saying that if any other TropEnt properties were worth having, then they weren’t on the table. Then again, given Nevada Gold’s current financial situation, it might have been the one getting cold feet, but the formal language doesn’t encourage that interpretation.
Either way, Butera’s been making some expansionist noises of late and pining for the return of the Atlantic City Tropicana. While Butera has operational experience in that market, from his days at Trump Entertainment Resorts, it’s exceedingly difficult to imagine New Jersey regulators letting TropEnt back onto the property so long as Yung has one thin dime of equity in the company.
