Even before the ink was dry on yesterday’s poll numbers, Las Vegas Sands President Rob Goldstein was in front of the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee, stumping 
for a $1.3 billion, taxpayer-funded, NFL-ready stadium. The 65,000-seat facility would be built on the southwestern corner of the newly expanded UNLV campus. “We’re dead serious about this. We may fail. We’re not saying this is simple. It’s complicated stuff, but it’s damn worth the effort,” Goldstein told the committee. Although it has previously been reported that Sands wants $780 million in public funding for the project, Goldstein wasn’t putting a dollar figure on it yesterday. Consultant Mark Rosentraub said the community could recoup the investment to the tune of $46 million in new tax revenue every year … meaning citizens would break even in 17 years. MGM Resorts International made a counterintuitive case for keeping room-tax money flowing to the Las Vegas Convention Center — by slamming the current state of the facility.
“We’ve got a world-class convention crowd that comes here, we don’t have a world-class facility, and we need one. We want to make sure this group stays focused on that,” said MGM prexy William Hornbuckle. Saying the issue was rife with “unanswered questions,” committee chair Steve Sisolak punted it to a future meeting, adding, “We need to determine how much some of this is going to cost and how we’re going to raise this revenue, if it’s even possible.” Aye, there’s the rub — can it be done, and how?
* Across the Pacific Ocean, Sands appears to be confident of an as-yet-unannounced opening date for its $2.7 billion Parisian megaresort in Macao. It held a job fair for locals 
and so many turned out that Sands extended the event by a day. In total, 600 contracts were signed. A follow-up job fair will be held in June. That Sands is hiring a portion of its workforce now and most of it later appears to confirm CEO Sheldon Adelson‘s suggestion that he might open parts of Parisian Macao early. If the job fair is any indication, it won’t be the casino that opens first: 95% of the openings were of a non-gaming nature. That must have come as a disappointment to the job applicants. Sands reported that half of the applicants were seeking gaming-specific jobs. The job fair follows a new employment initiative whereby 1,000 Macanese residents working for Sands will be offered “gaming team members opportunities for horizontal career mobility to non-gaming departments.” According to Sands, the program is already oversubscribed. Gaming activities at Sands’ Macao properties has slowed down sufficiently that the company sublet 43 of its dealers to Marina Bay Sands. Hey, it sure beats getting laid off and you get to experience Singapore firsthand.
* Speaking of hiring, Turning Stone Resort Casino isn’t taking impending new competition in New York State lying down. It has announced plans to add 300 new employees over the next quarter, bringing its workforce to 4,800. Many of the jobs, it must be noted, will be part-time or contingent upon events like an upcoming PGA tournament. But it’s still a positive economic indicator. Also, Turning Stone is adding 300,000 square feet of upscale retail to its amenities, at a cost of $100 million. The casino is prominently touting the hiring push, using current employees to showcase the job opportunities.
