Case Bets: Crystals, Baltimore, Mohegan Sun, Macao

Somebody’s finally found a good use for Crystals: as a museum. Daniel Liebeskind‘s design of the property would be more conducive to viewing art than to shopping and it never has trouble drawing lookie-lous. (Customers, eh, not so much.) Somebody at MGM Resorts International must have been thinking along the same lines for the high-end mall is playing host to a pair of James Turrell installations. One is on the monorail platform. The other occupies an empty, upper floor of the Louis Vuitton store. Akhob, as it is called, can only be viewed by appointment but it sounds though it would be worth the trouble.

As art critic Kevin McGarry rhapsodizes of the Las Vegas Strip, “a neon playground awash in a sea of nothingness, the extreme juxtaposition of barren beauty and unchecked consumerism affords [Turrell’s] destabilizing projects maximum impact on over-stimulated tourists.” Uh … if you say so, Kev. In any event, CityCenter is to be applauded for thinking way outside the box.

Cleared for table action. A planned 100 table games can be added to Horseshoe Baltimore. Already, Rock Gaming Caesars had downsized its planned slot inventory by 1,250 games. Since slots are taxed at a higher rate than tables in tax-happy Maryland, what Caesars Entertainment is doing makes plain old common sense.

Hmmmm … So a big-ass retail mall, with movie theaters and bowling lanes, is to be built on the Mohegan Sun campus. The stated reason is to stave off new competition from Foxwoods Casino Resort, in what has been described as a “defensive” move. But both Mohegan Sun and its proposed Massachusetts casino would draw from the Hartford market, so you have to wonder how much of the elaborate dog-and-pony show up in Palmer is sincere, especially when CEO Mitchell Etess (above) talks about giving people “a reason to drive a little further” … to Uncasville, not Palmer.

Kay konfusion kontinues. There’s one executive at Las Vegas Sands whose job is secure: Sands China CEO Edward Tracy, who received a contract extension two months before his current employment agreement with Sands would have elapsed. This speaks well of Tracy’s value but casts further questions over the still-fresh resignation of LVS’ CFO, Kenneth Kay. To renew one high-profile contract the same week that ties with another prominent executive are being severed certainly feeds the perception of unease within the House of Adelson.