What does Bethany Khan know that we don’t? Although Brookfield Asset Management has said nothing overt about selling the Hard Rock Hotel, the Culinary Union is obviously convinced that a sale is imminent and is ringing the alarm bell. In 
Khan’s own words, the union “is gearing up to demand a fair process that will assure an opportunity for the Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas’ housekeepers, food servers, cooks, and other non-union workers to decide whether they want union representation in an atmosphere that is free from management pressure tactics. Workers says that job retention is a critical concern to them in the event the property’s owner, Brookfield Asset Management, sells the property.”
Leaving aside the question of to whom Brookfield might sell the HRH (Hard Rock International being the obvious candidate), the Culinary is clearly concerned that Brookfield will conduct a purge of the workforce to make the property or more attractive or simply sell it without any guarantee that current HRH workers can keep their jobs. Most of all, the Culinary wants to make the HRH a union property. “Workers deserve a fair process that is 
free from threats, intimidation, and interference to determine whether they want to unionize,” says Culinary Secretary-Treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline. The Culinary’s preference is that unionization precede a sale, presenting the new owner with a fait accompli. The worst-case scenario would be something like what happened up at now-Santa Fe Station, where outgoing owners Paul and Sue Lowden — having lost a vote on unionization — retaliated by selling to Station Casinos, which up and fired everybody. Problem solved. The Culinary would obviously love to avoid a rerun of this scenario at the HRH but whether Brookfield would be around long enough to negotiate a contract is a good question.
* If you want to know what’s going down in Las Vegas, you have to read the Los Angeles Times. We’ve long maintained that Wolfgang Puck is the Ronald McDonald of fine dining. His Spago has been a 
quarter-century fixture of the Las Vegas Strip … until now. The lease is up and Puck is throwing himself into MGM Resorts International‘s arms. Todd English‘s venerable Olives at Bellagio is over and done with, the better to make room for Puck. Rationalized the celebrity chef, “25 years ago when we opened in the Forum, that was the place to be. A lot has changed since then.” In other words, it’s gone too mass-market for Puck’s palate. “The reason why we want to open Spago at the [sic] Bellagio is really because the Bellagio has our customer” — along with the highest ADRs on the Strip outside of the Four Seasons.
Foodstuffs for Spago 2.0 will be imported from Santa Monica. The LAT describes the design concept as follows: “brass fixtures, smoked-oak wood floors and leather seating. The restaurant will have a main dining room, bar and lounge, private dining spaces and an open-air patio with a view of the fountains.” In other words, Spago is dead, long live Spago.
* Nevada‘s recent embrace of recreational marijuana continues to have casino regulators perplexed. Or, as the Las Vegas Sun wittily put it, the Nevada Gaming Commission is “to hash” over loco weed in the casinos. The NGC is meeting to day to smoke out the complexities created by legalization of pot. As Commissioner Randolph Townsend said last year, “Were we to take a position that would allow a federal law to be broken and not act on it, that has a great chance of inviting federal intervention.” It also could put casinos in the predicament of having brought discredit upon the industry, setting them up for hefty NGC fines. What the commission appears to be driving towards is a Chinese wall between casino employees (hosts and dealers especially) and the marijuana industry.
We’ve already seen a high-rolling pot owner get 86’d from Wynncore. And although smoking or otherwise consuming marijuana is now legal in the Silver State, casinos may be doubly compelled to keep it happening on their premises — sort of a Catch-
22 for users. As far as Las Vegas Metro is concerned “a private residence” is the only place where one can light up a spliff. (How authorities are going to enforce against the public use of cannabis-infused chocolate bars and like products remains to be seen. Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett says, “The more difficult question is when you have someone coming in and they are using edibles and nobody can detect it.”) While Caesars Entertainment says it has a no-tolerance policy, Station Casinos is asking the NGC for clarification of such issues as whether a rented hotel room is a “private residence.”
Longstanding gaming regulations prevent casinos from allowing patrons to gamble while “visibly intoxicated” (something that got Caesars into hot water in the Terrence Watanabe case). It seems pretty clear that some form of ‘visibly stoned’ is going to have to be added to the rule book. But, boy, am I glad I don’t have to police the casino floor, trying to determine if people are high or simply having too much fun in Vegas.
I would say, just use some common sense, but apparently that’s a commodity that’s been losing ground for the last 20 years or so. At least I haven’t seen much of it in play for quite some time.