Nugget strikes gold; Hailing Caesars

One casino’s misery is another’s good fortune. The Golden Nugget in Atlantic City says it’s being swamped with new business ever since Caesars Entertainment and Tropicana Entertainment conspired to the euthanize the Atlantic Club. According to General Manager Tom Pohlman, “Our volumes have just gone through the roof. Fridays and Saturdays are stronger than the volumes we see in the summer.” (Hopefully this means Tilman Fertitta will rethink his plans to sell the Nugget.) To that end, it’s holding a job fair, thereby throwing a life raft to at least some of the former Atlantic Club workforce.

The sale price of the Claridge Hotel remains a deep, dark mystery, however. It must have been embarrassingly low …

In a display of questionable taste, Caesars Entertainment took its silly, oversized dice into a church service. The outreach, however, is more than commendable, especially with poverty rather dire in Baltimore. “In this community, the average family income is $13,000 for a family of four,” said Rev. Alvin C. Hathaway, Jr. “These are people who just need an opportunity.” That’s what Caesars aims to give them and its community spirit (and enterprise) are to be applauded. “We said, ‘Let’s go to the backyards of Baltimore,” said Caesars veep Joan Wilmer-Stewart, and so they’ve done, even if they should have left the fuzzy dice at home. Part of $442 million Horseshoe Baltimore‘s deal with the city, furthermore, is an $11 million, one-shot payment that will help fund a 22% property tax cut. S&G applauds Caesars’ Good Samaritan spirit.

Elsewhere in the Caesars empire, construction is proceeding at a furious pace on its $185 million The Cromwell. Caesars’ new boutique hotel is officially skedded for a May 21 opening, so that it can get a piece of all those Memorial Day Weekend pool parties. Despite an expansion of the property’s footprint, it will have fewer hotel rooms — 188 instead of 200 — but it will create 1,200 jobs. The creation of 19 suites, one of them 2,550 square feet big, explains the smaller number of rooms. In keeping with the laws of supply and demand, rooms are being priced aggressively — but at least it’s a pet-friendly property. (Caesars has one of the most enlightened policies in that regard.)

Online punters in Nevada will be able to play Delaware i-poker and vice versa, thanks to a new compact between the two states. Delaware’s Internet poker haul has been growing but slowly and this may remedy that. The compact will double the number of online casinos available in each state, from three to six.

MGM Resorts International is gung-ho on its $350 million stadium project. Cordish Cos.’ rival, $390 million project … not quite so much. The latter is basically reliant on landing an NBA or NHL franchise in order to make dollars and sense, and Cordish can’t offer any guarantees on that front. MGM doesn’t have any such worries, having farmed out the programming of its arena to AEG. Besides, the Cordish project still lacks at least $52 million in public funding that would make it viable. Downtown casinos aren’t keen on being hit with a levy to help Cordish, which is in the gambling biz itself.