A Majestic idea; MGM’s Springfield angst

Anyone remember the Greek Isles? Anybody want to? Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the Greek Isles site will midwife the $850 million Majestic Las Vegas, designed by Paul Steelman after the style of Paul Revere Williams. It will have 720 suites, 50 pool cabañas, a four-story spa and absolutely no gambling. This doesn’t entirely come as a shock: Gambling represents a smaller and smaller slice of the casin0-revene pie. Also, Convention Center Drive isn’t exactly a hotbed of casinos, so the no-gaming option seems right for this Las Vegas backwater. Says developer Lorenzo Doumani, “It is time for Las Vegas to provide a luxury option for those who visit our city who want something that is non-gaming.” Now, one could argue that if you don’t want gambling, why are you coming to Las Vegas? Or, if you want luxury without gaming, why not stay at Vdara?

But Doumani does seem au courant with the latest evolution of Las Vegas. On the other hand, Doumani didn’t get the memo that the Strip is maxed out on condos: He’s got nine floors of condos planned. They’re branded “corporate suites,” so the plan would appear to be to sell them to companies whose minions need a place to crash during conventions. He’s sure got location working in his favor: right across the street from the expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Majestic will really class the neighborhood up. Doumani plans to break ground next May and finish sometime in 2023.

* Speaking of non-gaming hotels, one of their virtues is that it enables Caesars Entertainment to franchise its restaurants in territories they might otherwise not go. Case in point: Giada de Laurentiis. The TV chef is expanding beyond her signature eatery in The Crowmwell to a pair of dining establishments in Caesars Republic Scottsdale. Flagship restaurant Luna by Giada offers “signature Italian fare with California influences and a world-class guest experience driven by personalized service.” It will be joined by Pronto by Giada, which is essentially a dumbed-down version of Luna. De Laurentiis also has a restaurant, GD Italian, in struggling Horseshoe Baltimore, which gives people at least one reason to go there.

* When it designed MGM Springfield, the braintrust at MGM Resorts International did something different: They put as many points of ingress and egress as they could, trying to unite the casino with downtown Springfield. What they were trying to avoid was the usual casino fortification that sucks money and business out of the surrounding area. It was a noble quest. One year later, the experiment does not appear to be working, according to the Boston Globe: “Reality has not yet lived up to the hype or the hope … ‘For lease’ signs still hang in storefront windows downtown.” Like rival casinos in upstate New York, MGM misjudged the amount of discretionary dollars in the market and is going to have to revise its projections downward. Small wonder that MGM tried to flip the property for Encore Boston Harbor in a ludicrous, midnight caper of which MGM quickly thought better.

On the other hand, fears that MGM Springfield would cannibalize Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino have proven considerably overblown, so much so that you wonder why talk of a tribal casino in the Hartford area persists. Also, MGM has shrugged off competition from Encore, too far distant to be a plausible threat. Without citing specifics, casino President Michael Mathis said “we bring thousands more people than we can feed every day and thousands more people than we can lodge every day. And where’s that business going to? It’s going up and down the street.” Mayor Domenic J. Sarno echoed Mathis’ contention without getting into specifics. That doesn’t mean MGM is on Easy Street.

Says the Rev. Richard McGowan of Boston College, referring to MGM’s “rugged competition … the MGM Springfield people thought they were going to dominate the whole area and they haven’t dominated at all. They’re going to have to learn to compete a lot more, because it’s not going to get any easier.” However, at least one small-business owner vouches for what Sarno calls, “the spinoff effect.” Nadim Kashouh, of Mediterranean restaurant Nadim’s Downtown, says business is “definitely up” since the casino opened, with percentage increases in the double-digits compared to pre-MGM numbers. The increased foot traffic will help the CVS that is soon to open downtown, even if businessmen may have mixed feeling about the new Wahlburgers … in the casino.

Gaming numbers may not be everything to MGM, if the strong business at its cineplex and sports bar are any indication. And the Globe found one customer whom it was lured away from Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. MGM surely hopes that there are many more out there like her.

* If you thought the Transportation Safety Administration was intrusive you ain’t seen nothing yet. It’s installing biometric facial-recognition technology at McCarran International Airport. And, judging by the passenger volume at McCarran, the TSA’s going to have its hands full. The agency claims that passengers will be asked to “opt in” but, knowing the ways of the TSA, that will be as free from coercion as an election in Russia. “TSA expects that facial recognition may permit TSA personnel to focus on other critical tasks and expediting security processes—resulting in shorter lines and reduced wait times,” they say. Promises, promises. Speaking of which, somebody at the TSA has been watching too many evil-twin TV episodes: “Biometric matching is also expected to increase TSA’s security effectiveness by improving the ability to detect impostors.”

If you’re not already troubled by this, the TSA proposes to have a database of 97% of travelers locked up by 2022. “Ultimately the agency plans to collect: live photos of passengers’ faces, photos from traveler documents, identification document issuance and expiration dates, travel dates, various types of identification documents, the organizations that issued their identification documents, the years of passenger’s births, as well as the gender or sex listed in the identification documents.” As the Advocate (Orson Welles) says in The Trial, “To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free.”