And then there was one.
A Cordish Co./Kansas Speedway joint venture has pulled the chicken switch on a $400 million casino project. This leaves avionics firm Butler National Service Corp., with its Dodge City concession, as the only company with an ongoing casino project in Kansas — Penn National, Harrah's Entertainment and now Cordish having walked away from the other three concessions. Project head Joseph Weinberg wants to build a casino-first, amenities-later version of what had been proposed. Of course, in order to do that, the bidding process will have to be re-started from scratch. Also, Weinberg's plan assumes that Cordish gets the nod a second time and, were I a member of the Kansas Lottery's board, I'd be getting pretty fed up with the diva-dom displayed by some of the casino applicants.
On the other hand, if a company as well-regarded as Cordish can't get its Speedway casino financed, that makes it easier to excuse Harrah's exit from the Sunflower State. The Lottery says it is willing to"invite applicants to apply with proposals they feel fit the current economic climate." [read: "smaller budgets"]. That, combined with the sudden availability of Sumner County, opens the door wide for Penn National. If the Lottery's board wants to give Penn the Sumner/Cherokee County parlay it requested (and lower the budget for the latter), Penn is the one company that could execute the projects out of cash on hand. Or is it saving its pennies for a Vegas Strip property now?
Across the border, the clever chaps at Pinnacle Entertainment have found a loophole in Missouri law that might enable them to open yet another casino market. Revenues at the old President riverboat, on the St. Louis waterfront, are down somewhere in the bilge water. But Pinnacle has a discrete gaming license for the ship and an option on some land toward the northern end of St. Louis, near the Chain of Rocks Bridge. There, it proposes to essentially dry-dock the President.
Since Missouri law doesn't expressly forbid what Pinnacle is contemplating, the company could open a new market in the state, even though the number of licenses remains frozen at 13. Smooth move. But it's not one that's going to sit well with the backers of Sugar Creek and Cape Girardeau projects that were frozen out when Missourians voted for the license cap last month. And it underscores the perils of shutting the door to new competition, as Pinnacle and Ameristar Casinos are beginning to treat Missouri as their private fiefdom.
Already, Ameristar veep Troy Stremming — the architect of the freeze — is huffing that Missourians dare not let Sugar Creek get into the game: “We don’t want to get into a situation where we are over-saturating the market and cannibalizing existing destination facilities.” No, but it's hunky-dory to let Stremming's buddies at Pinnacle have three St. Louis-area locations instead of their current two. No oversaturation or cannibalization there, huh? At least Stremming won't have the casinos-in-Kanas bogeyman to brandish anymore, now that all but one of those projects has collapsed.
Hope for Harrah's. The Chinese government is experimenting with parimutuel wagering on horse races. If the ChiComms can be persuaded to extend the sport of kings to Macao, maybe Harrah's can make serious use of that golf course it purchased and which is now ineligible for casino development. Frank Fahrenkopf couldn't resist mentioning that white elephant during his joint appearance with Harrah's CEO Gary Loveman during G2E. Judging from some of Fahrenkopf's subtle rapier thrusts and Loveman's harrumphing response, there seems little love lost between the twosome.
Herbst Watch, Day Two. The Magic 8 Ball (in the guise of Liz Benston) says bankruptcy likely for Herbst Gaming, which is in default on $1.27 billion of debt. This has been in the cards for Herbst ever since it got taken to the cleaners by MGM Mirage for some Primm, Nev., casinos that had seen better days (like, maybe 10 years ago). Benston's description of the $394 million boondoggle is "ill-advised." Understatement doesn't get any better than that, my friends.
