Losee Station bites the dust

We’re just past two years to the day when S&G predicted, “Good luck finding any takers” at $39.5 million for the old Castaways site. Even now, at a priced-to-move $8.3 million ($414K/acre), it’s not budging. The site’s threefold curse is, of course, location, location, location. This was a purchase Station Casinos didn’t need to make, shouldn’t have made, paid too much — and now it’s proving damned near impossible to unload. (It was quite a different story when Station was offloading acreage near Boulder Station and Sunset Station.)

What’s more — but only slightly — more surprising is that CEO Frank Fertitta III has run up the white flag on bitterly and long-sought “Losee Station,” an attempt to box in Boyd Gaming‘s planned Park Highlands failsino, a Gary Goett project that’s still down and out after years of trying. As luck would have it, the northward march of North Las Vegas development came to a screeching halt right where (creditor-besieged) Aliante Station was built, leaving both Station and Boyd holding Beltway plots out in Northeast Nowhere. (Of five casino projects mooted for the area, 0nly Aliante so much as broke ground.)

Station paid $47 million for the Losee Road/215 non-gaming parcel back in 2005. Or rather, the deal was done by Losee Elkhorn Properties, headquartered at 2811 W. Sahara Ave. (left). Voit Real Estate Services advertises the parcel as approximately 60 acres, which is pretty loose. Clark County records show it as just under 54 acres. Voit’s asking price works out to $11.6 million — a nearly $25 million bath for Station. Throw in the Castaways discount and that’s $80 million-plus in land going at 75%+ markdown. Now that the Ferittas have to share ownership of Station with secured and unsecured creditors alike, their new business partners probably aren’t receptive to any talk of “long-term development strategies.”

So Boyd wins this round … but it’s as Pyhrric a victory as you’re ever likely to see.