In a typically ludicrous Gary Loveman brainstorm, Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon is to become — wait for it — Caesars Drai’s. (Yeah, ‘WTF?’ and all that.) 
Although you’d have to be either masochistic or insane to loan money to Caesars Entertainment at this point, the company has the nerve to ask for $180 million to fund this bizarre retrofit. Have the structural implications (and cost) of putting tons of water and a nightclub atop a 200-room casino-hotel been seriously contemplated? If they don’t require strapping a giant cement-and-steel truss onto the exterior of Barbary Bill’s, er, Caesars Drai’s, I’ll be pleasantly surprised, although Bill’s existing parking-garage infrastructure takes much of the lunacy off the concept.
As for the rebranding … what can one say? After deeming Caesars imprimatur to be of too great value to waste on podunk towns like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Baltimore, they’re busting it out for … this? Why don’t just you slap the Caesars logo on the Harrah’s Metropolis riverboat and make a complete joke of the brand while you’re at it?
No matter how much Loveman perfumes this pig, Standard & Poor’s is skeptical. Spritzing on a bit more cologne, the Las Vegas Sun adds, “it is strategically located near Caesars’ under-construction Linq entertainment district.” Yes, and the long-vanished Klondike was “strategically located” near Mandalay Bay. So? It’s still an old, small casino in a market where customers — especially high-end ones — have become acclimated to sprawling hotel rooms. Loveman promises to reinvent Barbary Bill’s as a “boutique hotel” (read: jacked-up ADRs) As S&P observes, Caesars is trying to pull a Sam Nazarian “in a highly competitive market with many casino and nightclub operators… redeveloping and turning around an underperforming property … attracting a new customer demographic.” Sounds a lot like the agonies Alex Yemenidjian has experienced in trying to reinvent the Tropicana Las Vegas for the 21st century.
S&P put a “negative” or “speculative” rating on debt for Caesars Drai’s and you’d have to be a speculator to put your money into this. Leaving aside the very serious danger of a Caesars bankruptcy, at his present rate, Loveman would take at least seven or eight years to pay even some of your money back. This isn’t an investment: It’s a slot pull on a machine with no jackpot.
Speaking of empty hoppers, struggling hotelier Donald Trump is offering extended-stay discounts at select hotels, most notably his ill-conceived Trump 
International on the Las Vegas Strip. With a theoretical base price of $129/night, plus 25% off a four-night stay, you’re looking at $96.75 a night. It’s incredibly safe to say that’s not the price point Das Donald had in mind when he erected his gilded phallus, a lasting monument to his miserable failure to challenge Steve Wynn on the latter’s home turf. (Yes, they had different business models but Trump is obsessed with Wynn, while the latter clearly couldn’t care less.) Anyway, it’s but a matter of time before Hilton Grand Vacations‘ 300-unit share of Trump’s Stump expands to encompass the entire property.
Assignment: Springfield. After a brief tenure as CEO of Canadian firm Gateway Casinos, former MGM Grand Detroit prexy Lorenzo Creighton is heading back into the lion’s den. MGM Resorts International has re-hired him and handed the veteran casino boss its East Coast portfolio. It’s an empty folder at the moment but Creighton’s task will be to fill it with new casinos in western Massachusetts, in Maryland, perhaps Florida. He’ll even be heading back to the Great White North, to sell MGM’s vision of a multi-billion-dollar CityCenter offspring on the Toronto waterfront. Let’s wish him luck.
It’s also old-home week for an ex-Station Casinos exec, Steve Cavallaro. The former COO returns to his old stomping 
grounds now as president of both Station and its semi-outside management firm, Fertitta Entertainment LLC. (Not to be confused with Texas cousin and bitter rival Tilman Fertitta‘s Fertitta Entertainment Group.) Cavallaro’s brief will be to oversee the nuts and bolts of the company, while ex-president Frank Fertitta III (left) does ‘the vision thing’ in his continuing roles as CEO and chairman. As to why such a large and well-established company needs a discrete management entity, that’s the kind of move that causes one to look with skepticism upon business strategy within Station HQ.
