Arising from the grave of the Silver Club, the brand-new Bourbon Square Casino was finished just in the nick of time for yesterday’s opening. Owner Nevada Casino Holdings has done well, delivering a “new” casino for just $5 million. It helps that the property’s minimal number of hotel rooms (204) are still dark. If and when they do reopen, it may be as apartments, not overnight lodgings.
Joseph “Tomato King” Procacci is back in the news again, thanks to the Philadelphia Public Record. It thundered, “Of the six bidders who are seeking approval for their plans for the city’s second casino from the Gaming Control Board, only one continues to offer up-to-date reports and interviews with the board members on a regular basis” … you guessed it: Tomato King. Despite being largely unencumbered with casino experience or a name-brand partner, Procacci and Dr. Walter Lomax “plan the largest of the six offerings presented to the Pennsylvania Gaming Commission.” I don’t know whether that’s hubris or naivete. As the late Terrence Lanni once said, running casinos isn’t like curing cancer … but if it were easy everyone would be doing it profitably.
At least Procacci’s Folly gains a measure of credibility from the addition of various and sundry gaming executives to its board, starting with much-traveled President Joseph Canfora (left, with Lomax; late of Station Casinos and many others); former Trump Entertainment Resorts CEO John Burke; Laughlin escapee Mark Sterbens; and Craig F. Sullivan, late of Primadonna Resorts, Aztar Corp. and Park Cattle Corp., which did epic battle with Columbia Sussex. It may be a motley crew but they’ve got experience in myriad markets — and gaming companies — between them, so Procacci has staffed up a nice little braintrust for himself. By using existing buildings, Tomato King figures he can open six months sooner than his rivals. How he is going to build the biggest casino in town for $428 million (roughly half of what Steve Wynn will spend) remains to be explained. But the budget gives Procacci a fighting chance of seeing a double-digit return on his investment.
But … why does Casino Revolution‘s logo resemble a clown’s red, putty nose?
Speaking of Station, it continues to gobble up small, presumably struggling casinos, as its Wildfire brand spreads southward like … well, like wildfire, I guess.
Penn National Gaming may be wooing the Massachusetts town of Tewksbury for a slot parlor but talks with adjoining Andover are heating up, too. Meanwhile, Rush Street Gaming is turning on the charm for the benefit of Millbury but some residents are pretty het up against this newfangled casino stuff. They have at least one strong argument going for them: The site Neil Bluhm‘s people chose is less than two miles from two elementary schools. If any slot-parlor referendum goes down to defeat at the ballot box, it will probably be Bluhm’s. His attempts to crack the Bay State market have been ill-starred from the outset.
