Columbia Sussex, owner of the Las Vegas Tropicana may have picked an inopportune time to stick its head over the parapet and lob a mud bomb at the Las Vegas Sun. (See previous entry, “When casinos attack.”) Seems the company’s Nevada casinos are the subject of a multi-pronged investigation by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
“(A)t least with them, we’ll get a fair hearing,” said company spokesman Hud Englehart, taking an apparent swipe at the New Jersey Casino Control Commission, which tossed Columbia Sussex out of the Garden State, largely for its “contumacious” defiance of the rules.
In particular, according to NGCB chair Dennis Neilander, the Control Board is looking at “the security level.” This is significant. One of the main reasons Columbia Sussex got its hat handed to it in New Jersey was because it over-cut its security force. (Even an internal company document acknowledged this “could prove to be a serious liablity.”)
A parallel scenario played out here, with Englehart acknowledging to the Sun that the Trop slashed, then had to beef up, its security detail, after a “short-term bump in incidents.” Even so, the property is operating with a 24% smaller security team than was employed by predecessor Aztar Corp.
As for the cuts in New Jersey, the NJCCC reports, “there was [sic] inadequate security personnel to perform trolley drops and and bill changer pickups. To compensate, Tropicana impermissibly removed personnel assigned to mandatory posts to perform the drops and pickups, leaving the mandatory posts unattended.”
Here in Vegas, a letter from the Culinary Union to the NGCB alleges conditions at the Tropicana more like those at the Queen of Hearts downtown a decade ago.
Elsewhere, news of a bondholder lawsuit continues to make the rounds, even as it appears that as many as five bidders may be in the hunt for Columbia Sussex’s Casino Aztar, which is being sold to liquidate senior debt. Indiana has put its own probe of the hotelier on hold, presuming that the sale will go ahead as planned.
As for the suit, the Cincinnati Enquirer gets both sides of the story. Columbia Sussex seems to be at odds with itself regarding the Atlantic City Tropicana, though. It’s publicly committed the proceeds of a sale — certain to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars — to retiring senior debt.
But it’s still pursuing an appeal of its eviction by the NJCCC. If Columbia Sussex were somehow to get the A.C. Trop back, would it be like the dog who caught the car? How will it replace the half-billion or more in senior-debt-retirement capital that it will have taken off the table?
As Columbia Sussex likes to say, “Food for thought, perhaps?”
