Caruso sings, Lerner hallucinates

Since I had one foot out the door en route to Albany when Caesars Entertainment held its Rick Caruso-led media blitz on Project Linq, I’m a bit late to the party. Some of my early reactions can be heard on KNPR-FM‘s State of Nevada. (It’s amusing to hear how uncomfortable the host gets when I lay into Caesars’ braintrust and the shabby state of its portfolio.) The hoo-ha over the “observation wheel” remains a mystery to me, especially when the far-less-obstructed view from the rival Howard Bulloch Ferris wheel is taken into account. Spending 30 minutes crammed into a gondola with 40 other people doesn’t sound like fun to me, and I love gondola rides. As for its name, “The Vegas High Roller” … oy! Nobody spells “class” with a capital “K” like Gary Loveman, whose signature project this will be.

There must be a communications department at Caesars tasked solely with devising “Our Bullshit Story for Today.” Senior Vice President of Development Greg Miller was handed his b.s. talking points and somehow managed to keep a straight face whilst saying, “The conclusion we reached back even before downturn was that we didn’t need more hotel capacity.” Yup. That totally explains the purchase of Barbary Coast and the construction of the (empty) Octavius Tower. Nosiree, Bob! Didn’t need additional room inventory.

Although both O’Shea‘s and the soon-to-be-ex-Imperial Palace practically creak with obsolescence, Caesars is eschewing radical changes in favor of expensively perfuming both of those pigs. The IP’s public areas will be prettified. If you’re hoping for upgraded hotel rooms, sorry but that’s a long way down the road. Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall will be re-rebranded as something upscale-ish and, gosh knows, Caesars owns a clutter of unused or underused brands, having swallowed most of its competitors whole. Perhaps S&G should hold a contest for the best new names for the Imperial Palace and Barbary Bill’s. Each winner gets a free copy of Eating Las Vegas!

The timidity of Linq certainly squares with Caesars’ mixed message about who it’s trying to attract. We’ve heard professional thirty- and fortysomethings, we’ve heard “younger, hipper visitors” (read: douchebags, beer bottles brandished on high) and we’re hearing that Caesars wants to hang onto the blue-collar O’Shea’s crowd. That sounds like a lot of cakes to have and eat simultaneously. Interestingly, the product offerings — vague though they are — are explicitly not targeted to those visitors over the age of 46 who will still represent 48% of the city’s tourist base by 2015.

Not having been to The Grove, the project on which Caruso hangs his hat, I cannot say how well a downsized version of the same thing will jibe with the Las Vegas Strip. However, after the Crystals boondoggle, anything counts as an improvement. One of several points in Linq’s favor is its design. Unlike CityCenter, Linq won’t require a massive behavioral change by Vegas visitors to draw lookie-lous. It’ll be right on the Strip, not a block away and up a man-made hill. It’s a praiseworthy goal to recruit 30-40 restaurants and stores totally new to Las Vegas. I’m skeptical only because so many of the former and latter are already here. Brand-new brand names may be scarce on the ground. But anything that bespeaks “affordable” is going to be welcome on the present-day Strip. As for what’s coming in the immediate future, there seem to be a few concessions made to America’s newfound frugality.

As for Linq becoming an urban gathering place for locals, that’s the one idea which seems completely off the beam. Las Vegans generally don’t go to the Strip for casual dining, let alone for retail, and if they changed their behavior because of Linq (highly unlikely), the existing parking facilities would scarcely be adequate. Locals just aren’t going to tangle with Strip traffic — and Strip prices — when they could go to Town Square or Fremont East instead. Although I’m unable to get into specifics, one-on-one I’ve found Loveman obtuse on matters regarding Las Vegas per se and doubt his sense of “community” transcends more than two blocks either side of Las Vegas Boulevard. It’s another faux downtown for tourists, not a game changer.

If it weren’t for Caesars LBO insanity, we might be discussing something really bold. Instead, this really is (to repeat a phrase) The Next Little Thing, a whole lotta tinkering around the edges. Oh, and remember when $550 million was supposed to be sufficient to build Project Linq and complete the Octavius Tower? A half-billion just doesn’t buy what it used to.

At least Caesars has several billion reasons for its yes-no-maybe stance on redeveloping its ramshackle Strip holdings. At the opposite end of the spectrum is analyst Bill Lerner, who took a header off the deep end earlier this month. In a report entitled Carpe Diem, Lerner predicted that despite the Strip having more hotel rooms (particularly at the high end) than ever before, it would “experience unprecedented levels of occupancy,” driven by “plausible” closures of the former Greek Isles (now the Clarion Hotel & Casino), as well as Station Casinos‘ Days Inn Wild Wild West Gambling Hall and the Las Vegas Hilton. Currently, we’re running 84-87% full and ADRs would have to increase more than 25% to fulfill Lerner’s roseate prophecies.

Lerner’s self-described “realistic analysis” has a sudden tsunami of prosperity lifting all boats to such an extent that he deems it “unlikely” that a redeveloped SLS Sahara won’t reopen by Dec. 31, 2015 and/or Boyd Gaming completes some of Echelon over the next four years and/or Carl Icahn does the same with Fontainebleau. Hoo boy! Maybe Lerner should have entitled that advice column Caveat Emptor.