Has Illinois finally bottomed out? Trop shakeup; Big markdown on Trump

Sorry to disappoint, but we won’t have the answer until June–August, three straight months with the same number of weekend days as last year. By that point we’ll know whether April‘s 2% increase was the beginning of a trend. Last year, T.S. Eliot‘s “cruelest month” saw Illinois casinos creep microscopically upward and 2011 had one more weekend day than 2010 — which may neutralize this year’s apparent upswing. However … this was accomplished in an April that saw Harrah’s Metropolis (-21.5%; its hotel is seen at left) shut down by floodwaters, shaving $2 million off the Land of Lincoln’s casino gross. Had Ol’ Man River not intervened, we’d be talking a theoretical 4% increase.

Metropolis won’t reopen until May 23, so Caesars Entertainment has to batten down the hatches and ride out a long financial squall on its Southern Illinois front. But what’s to explain Harrah’s Joliet ($20 million, -6%) losing business to Penn National Gaming‘s Empress Joliet ($14, +9%)? And how can we be sure that’s where customers are going? I’m glad you asked. (Actually you didn’t ask but I’ll spell it out anyway.) The Harrah’s vessel was down $1.2 million in April, which just so happens to be the exact same amount that its crosstown rival gained. Empress has 15 more slot machines, an edge infinitesimal as to be meaningless.

No big mystery there … although it puts a small dent in the vaunted superiority of Total Rewards as a player-incentive juggernaut. Harrah’s Joliet has, in fact, been losing business 14 of the last 15 months but Penn’s Hollywood Aurora boat has been on a comparably bad skid, halted last month by a 3% uptick in business. MGM Resorts International‘s Grand Victoria vessel continues to sit pretty ($26 million, +3%), generating the highest revenues and lowest fluctuations in its market.

The St. Louis-area riverboats are coming out of their dive. Revenue declines slowed in March and began to reverse in April. Penn’s Alton Belle was flat (and had the lowest revenues in the state) while privately held Casino Queen nosed up 5%. Elsewhere, things were good for Boyd Gaming‘s Par-A-Dice boat ($11 million, +11%) and very, very good for Jumer’s Casino Rock Island (the state’s one land-based casin0), whose $8 million take was good for a 19% increase. With at least 16 months of positive year/year comparisons, Jumer’s is the sole casino to thrive amidst the various strangulation measures state government has either levied or tried to impose. Bravo!

Shakeup at Trop East. Although Columbia Sussex holdover Marc Giannantonio (left) didn’t have the greatest labor-relations reputation, Carl Icahn decided to keep him on as Tropicana Atlantic City CEO when Uncle Carl took possession. Giannantonio’s reward for recent improvements in financial performance has been to get sacked. The 22-year Trop veteran got the top job because he was willing to be a ColSux hatchet man, so what went around eventually came around.

But his sudden departure undoubtedly has much less to do with his job performance than with the availability of a rising star in the casino business: Anthony Rodio. He’s been crushing the competition at Penn’s Hollywood Casino in lower Indiana and if you can land the boss of Penn’s marquee property, you reel him in. Another Boardwalk veteran, Rodio has worked at six of the city’s 11 properties, including holding the top jobs at the Atlantic City Hilton and Resorts Atlantic City. One of Colony Capital CEO Tom Barrack‘s several boneheaded decisions during his disastrous A.C. adventure was to send Rodio packing in favor of Trump Entertainment Resorts retread Nick Ribis, who helped Barrack run those places straight into the ground.

Rodio’s worked for at least three different operators (including Harrah’s Entertainment and Trump) and he’s not been gone long, so this is hardly his first rodeo on the Boardwalk. And while Giannantonio never was able to restore the Trop’s financial performance to pre-ColSux levels — in considerable measure due to economic factors beyond his control — he steadied the ship successfully enough (gaming revenues up 7% last year) to be a good hire elsewhere. Trump Resorts could do a lot worse in finding a post-Mark Juliano CEO … and did.

Trump Dump. One of my sources just sent me a flier for a condo liquidation at Trump International, the property whose imaginary ‘success’ Donald J. Trump was bragging on during his recent Bobby Slayton impersonation gig at Treasure Island. (The salient differences are that Slayton is funny by intent and is actually less offensive to women, blacks, gays, stutterers, etc. I’d also be more inclined to take Slayton’s economic assessments at face value.) Maybe it’s more appropriate that Trump wound up with just one hotel tower just off the Strip instead of two. In its tumescent solitude, it seems like an one-finger salute to nearby Wynncore. You can almost hear its owner’s signature Five Boroughs bray: “Heya, Steve Wynn, ovah there. Dis hotel of mine is taller that what youse got! So %#@& you, ya mutha%#@&¢§! Wanna play golf sometime?”

Yes, in a miraculously ironic bit of timing, Trump Int’l is circulating an everything-must-go price sheet for 39 condo units, all in the range of 928-983 square feet. These one-bedroom aeries are being hawked at $175K-$215K off list price. Yes, for a mere $975K — or as much as $1.16 million — you can own a piece of Trump’s Las Vegas nightmare, at as little as $991.86/square foot. That’s nothing compared to the absolute fire sale that Trump Int’l held last year for its smallest units. The cream of the jest is that LoopNet.com is advertising these sale prices with a rendering that shows both the existing Trump tower and the never-built Tower Two. (Maybe the Trumpster is trying to sell boxes of air where the second tower was supposed to be. Who’d put it past him?) With, I am told, 900-plus vacancies remaining in Tower One, Trump’s not going to have buyers lining up around the block, not at those rates.

Hotel-room prices at Trump remain one of the best bargain plays on the Strip. But it looks like Das Donald and partner Phil Ruffin are going to have discount more deeply when you look at some of the steals available on or near the Strip, including Palms Place, MGM Signature and, yes, some Trump Int’l cribs going for as little as $600/foot.

Time to borrow the Wal-Mart smiley face, Don, and start pricing those condos to move. Proposed new Trump International slogan: Always low prices!