Enter Loveman, exit jobs; Tamares’ legacy

Just this morning I was thinking that the first thing Planet Hollywood employees could expect when Harrah’s Entertainment took over was large-scale job losses and so it will be. This is one of those occasions I really hate being proven correct. A while back, S&G accused Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman of operating “a big-ass Columbia Sussex” and he appears determined to live down to that reputation.

Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman Dennis Neilander is honing his standup act, meantimes. He must have had them rolling in the aisles with his declaration that the acquisition of yet another struggling Strip property “makes a lot of sense for Harrah’s.” As for his punchline about this transaction redounding to the greater benefit of Nevada, I’ll let you puzzle that one out. Was Planet Ho delinquent on its tax bill?

By grabbing a multi-billion-dollar casino resort for $70 million in cash, Harrah’s does at first blush appear to have pulled off the heist of the decade. However, the Planet Ho acquisition comes with a drag anchor in the form of a half-billion dollars-plus in debt. What’s the over/under on when Loveman starts trying to haggle that down to 60 cents on the dollar or less? If there’s one thing Harrah’s needs like a hole in the head at this point in its history, it’s more debt.

After their rather wan performance at The Rio, it also took some nerve for incoming Planet Ho prexy Marilyn Winn and Western Division President Tom Jenkin to get up there and say outgoing owner Robert Earl had failed to provide quality entertainment (adding, “We can do that.”). Whatever its flaws, Peepshow was definitely ambitious and sometimes excellent, and Stomp Out Loud was genuinely superb. CineVegas graced the showroom and ownership lured a couple of little pageants called Miss America and Miss USA.

The movie premieres Earl lined up weren’t always A-list stuff but he tried and he did land a couple of biggies. Without him, Las Vegans wouldn’t have been able to ogle Milla Jovovich at the Resident Evil: Extinction kickoff, so Earl has my eternal gratitude for that. But hey, Winn’s got N(icole)D(urr) on her Rolodex. Problem solved!

Winn and Jenkin also inherit the 7,000-seat albatross that is the Aladdin Performing Arts Theatre. Good luck with that, short of persuading ABBA to regroup and become resident headliners. (Look! Flying pigs!) One positive contribution they could make is to finish the redesign of Desert Passage, whose Miracle Mile incarnation ran out of energy and — more importantly — money at about the halfway point. However, given that Harrah’s is in rummage-sale mode, it’s highly doubtful there’s money in the kitty for capital improvements at Planet Ho. The promised $30 million in operating cash doesn’t look so impressive next to the $20 million that it will require for Harrah’s just to service the debt on the place.

S&G sends its condolences to alleged advantage player (and former Total Rewards member) Steven Silverstein, who will now have one fewer casino in which to gamble. He’s unlikely to have much luck in the Clark County District Court system, where the house always wins.

It didn’t take much to level the old Queen of Hearts motel, monarch and symbol of Tamares Group‘s furtive 2004 acquisition of big chunks of downtown Las Vegas. From the looks of it, a couple of crowbar-equipped stevedores could have brought her down. Former owner Ann Meyers, under whose stewardship the Queen became notorious as one of Las Vegas’ sleaziest, most crime-ridden casinos (it hosted a slot route), actually said the old den of vice, “gave me what everyone could possibly dream of.” True … if that of which you dream is 680 police calls in a one-year period.

The Sun‘s story states the Queen was bought by Barrick Gaming Corp., then sold to Tamares but that was only a cosmetic change.  Barrick was  a “beard” for Tamares, which registered the property in Barrick’s name. The pedantic truth is even more farcical: Barrick  held a 23% interest and “owned” the physical structures, but leased the underlying land from Tamares. It was basically a charade to enable Tamares to evade Nevada Gaming Control Board scrutiny. (Back in my Las Vegas Business Press days, we won a Nevada Press Association award for bringing this little tap dance to light.)

Meanwhile, Tamares’ de facto flagship, the Plaza, continues to sink, recently cutting its slot inventory by 31%. There’s barely a pretense anymore that Tamares isn’t pulling the strings, with Plaza boss Bobby Ray Harris (plucked from obscurity to run three Downtown casinos) listed as president of Play LV, an entity dating back to 2003. This was the company through which Navegante Group briefly ran Tamares’ casinos — albeit on a very short leash. Navegante is long since gone but PlayLV remains. Hmmm …

I’m still playing phone tag with city officials, trying to figure out how the Queen got from Tamares to LiveWork to Forest City. I’ve read conflicting reports as to whether it was a sale or a property swap. Either way, it would be interesting to know what Tamares got, considering that it went into the Downtown real estate market on the hunch that it was the Next Big Thing.

Ameristar loses money. Actually, the company had a good quarter, beating analysts’ projections. But it’s standard industry practice to stash one-time charges in the 4Q report, essentially manufacturing a loss in what would be (and in this case, was) a profitable quarter. File this under “non-story.”