Case Bets: Loveman & ladies’ shoes, CityCenter, Singapore, the Palms and Wayne Newton

Naptime in the casino. If American casinos are less frenetic than those of, say, Macao, the gambling culture in Singapore is very relaxed indeed. Fancy a catnap at your slot machine? No problem! Oh, to see the expression on Sheldon Adelson‘s face when people start sacking out in swanky Marina Bay Sands, which is …

… still a long way from completion, per this Feb. 24 photo. Should we start taking action on the viability of that April 27 soft opening? (It will be followed by a semi-soft opening in June, with really, truly, absolutely final completion promised by the end of 2010 … a full year behind schedule.)

I see the Dutch-boy haircut is making a comeback …

Loveman profiled. The CEO of Harrah’s Entertainment has some unusual metrics of casino success, mainly involving women’s footwear. He also brags on the “tens of billions of dollars” that Texas Pacific Group and Apollo Management have supposedly just lying around, gathering dust, which ought to raise new questions about why Harrah’s can’t make its debtors whole or pay employees their 401(k) match. Loveman assumes he’s doing “a tolerable job” as CEO. Given the pickles he’s gotten Harrah’s into — and yet still managed to eke out profits and avoid bankruptcy — his self-assessment might be right on the money. (And if it’s not, he’s a shoo-in for a job at DSW.)

Loveman does make a trenchant point about projects that have the industry chasing decreasing ROI: “We are not building these places to live in them ourselves. We are not building them to show them off to our friends and our girlfriends and our boyfriends. We are supposed to be building them to make a return.” Then again, Loveman is head of the class in Revisionist History 101. It was not so long ago that he was agglomerating land at steep prices to build a “palace” of his own. Trust the tale, not the teller.

CityCenter reviewed (again). There have been many critiques published to date but that by Peter Paul Rubens biographer Mark Lamster may be the funniest yet. It’s chock-full of quotable lines like, “Is the word vdara Spanish for ‘banal architectural experience’?” He describes CityCenter as “an anodized-aluminum Oz sheathed in reflective glass, a place apart from a city as fragmented as Daniel Libeskind’s architecture.” You’ll get plenty of chuckles from Lamster’s account of three days in Oz but — considering that he typifies the East Coast intelligentsia that MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren is trying to impress — I doubt they’re laughing much over at MGM HQ. (There are a couple of minor factual bobbles, “McCarron [sic],” a phantom Borders bookstore at Mandalay Bay, but nothing egregious.)

Speaking of funny, I’ve been trying to tiptoe around the much-ado-about-nothing story that’s been making headlines locally. Gov. Jim Gibbons took frequent textual partner Kathy Karrasch to Washington, D.C. for a big gubernatorial hootenanny. KLAS-TV got an advance tip about the assignation (perhaps because Mrs. Karrash was posting about it on her Facebook page) and conducted a ridiculous ambush interview at the Reno airport. Confronted separately, Karrash dissembled and gave non-denial denials which was the height of savvy compared to Midnight Jim. He could have kiboshed the whole thing with a manly avowal, making KLAS’ exercise look as silly as it was.

Instead, in classic Gibbons deer-in-the-headlights fashion, he told stupid and obvious lies, which he had to retract. And the story might have ended there had not Karrasch’s Facebook page bobbed to the surface, followed by today’s hilarity. Look, Governor, a word of friendly advice: If you’re going to take a lady friend to D.C. and keep it hush-hush, it might not be so good an idea to pose for photographs … least of all with South Carolina‘s philanderer-in-chief, Mark Sanford. God may have given Midnight Jim brains, but common sense … that apparently fell into the “Batteries not included” category.

(Considering what Gibbons proposes to do to pathological-gambling sufferers in Nevada, having a few chuckles at his expense ought to be considered executive clemency.)

What’s a Palms worth? The illusory Vegas condo market claims another victim. A casino that could have sold for somewhere in the neighborhood of $560 million in 2008 is now worth but $110 million (at a generous 9X cash flow, a metric usually reserved for Strip properties). Las Vegas’ great success story of 2001 is looking like the first big tragedy of 2010.

MGM Mirage gets breathing room. Then again, did bankers have any choice? Probably very little, given the amount of unsecured debt that was extended to the casino giant when business was booming. On the not-so-good side, MGM proposes to issue still more unsecured debt (which, where certain casino firms are concerned, probably ought to be termed, “Money we never intend to repay”). However, the company says it will honor $1.2 billion that’s due next year — rather than put a Harrah’s-style beatdown on its debtors —  so good on you, MGM.

Wayne Newton Watch. Misfortunes are mounting for the Tropicana headliner. Shakespeare wrote that joys come as single spies but griefs arrive by the battalion — and Wayne Newton can vouch for that, sadly. The confrontation at Casa Shenandoah (a significant navigational landmark for Vegas drivers) had the town all-abuzz yesterday. Along with the tragic backstory behind recent Once Before I Go cancellations comes the news that Newton’s band, the biggest on the Strip, is somewhat less big now. However, the 86-ing of the Young Wayne Gets off the Bus shtick spells an improvement. That was one of the hokiest bits in the show, using the worst lip-synch this side of a Japanese monster movie.

Amidst all the tumult in his life, one’s not sure how Newton manages to make the show go on, period, but right now I don’t think any of us would trade places with him for even a moment.