Good grief!

Some day, in the not-so-distant future, MILF-y Archon Corp. underboss Sue Lowden may make a distinguished addition to the U.S. Senate. As the secretary-treasurer of a casino company (one that aspires to build a sports arena on the Strip), she’s coming off like former beauty queen she is and the beneficiary of nepotism she might well be. Seriously, how many competent casino executives would make a boneheaded mistake like this? Politics may be Ms. Lowden’s métier (although she seems to be on the verge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory) but it’s no longer possible to take her seriously as the business luminary which she has been painted. If her husband weren’t the CEO and primary shareholder of Archon, we’d all be saying, “My god, who gave that person keys to the executive suite?”

(As for the arena project, Archon is by nature a landlord, not a developer. If Paul Lowden got the $350 million he seeks to borrow, would he know what to do with it?)

You can stick a fork in “Epicentre,” the once-mooted meta-mega-über-duper resort envisioned by Harrah’s Entertainment. As one of the suitors for that Clark County-backed sports arena, CEO Gary Loveman is offering to throw in 10 acres out back of the Flamingo-Imperial Palace-Harrah’s Las Vegas bloc. Since it’s currently just dark, vacant land, any change would be an improvement — although neither Audrie nor Koval Lanes is remotely adequate to handle event-sized traffic. The interesting part is that the 10 acres are valued at $182 million. It tells you how out of control Vegas land prices got in the mid-decade to think that Loveman was paying $18.2 million an acre for land two blocks off the Strip. Crazy times, I tell ya.