Marrandino returns; Crime and casinos

It’s hard to say which is the more intriguing aspect of the announced reinvention of Lake Tahoe‘s Horizon Casino Resort. Is it the adoption of the Hard Rock brand or the re-emergence of Don Marrandino as the man who’s going to lead the Horizon into this new era? It’s a comedown for Marrandino, last spotted as tribune for Caesars Entertainment‘s East Coast properties, but a catch for owners Neva One to land so much casino acumen in one person. It’s also a comeback for Marrandino, who served three years (2001-03) as president of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, back during the Peter Morton era. He went from the HRH to run Harvey’s Lake Tahoe and Harrah’s Lake Tahoe. So he’s familiar with the challenges of the market, unique in Nevada for its volatility.

Marrandino will be overseeing the Hard Rock on behalf of Warner Hospitality, which manages the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas. Bucking the consolidation tide, “Jon Park, one of the partners in Neva One, said that keeping the resort out of the hands of large corporations was of utmost importance.” The 539 hotel rooms will get a $60 million makeover, with mid-December targeted for the reopening as Hard Rock. Marrandino promises “our-star-type room quality” and “a lot of things that we’ll be announcing over the next several months.” He’s got his work cut out for him, the Horizon having reputedly gone to seed under the management tenure of Columbia Sussex.

One amenity that the casino won’t have is a Hard Rock Cafe. For that you’ll have to head over to Harvey’s.  The reinvented Horizon will, of course, have that distinctive Hard Rock look. “The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino brand has music infused in its DNA and is known for celebrating individuality and uniqueness, which makes it a perfect fit for South Lake Tahoe,” enthused Park.

* One of our most quotable legislators, state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D) is in the news again, making a strangely pointless proposal. With too little time left in the year to get it on the New Jersey ballot, he has proposed a constitutional amendment to license two new casinos, in unspecified, non-Atlantic City locations. Their owners would have to pay an extra 5% levy, money which would be reinvested on the Boardwalk. Lesniak thinks that $100 million could be raised that way.

This is just the opening volley in a debate that we can expect to become a pitched battle next year. As for Fireman Capital Partners‘ $4.2 billion casino proposal for Jersey City, it got a reality check from state Sen. James Whelan. “That seems to be a very optimistic scenario,” he said of the sky-high price tag.

* One of the most pervasive canards about casinos — that they are crime magnets — has been partly debunked in a Temple University/Drexel University study of SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia. “The researchers found that any potential significant crime increases either did not occur or were effectively controlled by a reassignment of existing local police officers.” Wrote co-author Dr. Lallen T. Johnson, “Early discussions about the arrival of SugarHouse revolved around whether the added tax revenue would outweigh the social cost of the expected increased crime. Although reasonable concerns, our findings suggest that these negative expectations did not play out in this case.”

Drug crimes, car thefts, street crime and break-ins over an eight-year period were studied in the Fishtown neighborhood. Most decreased in the SugarHouse area. In the case of car burglaries, these were displaced to other areas. Break-ins and drug dealing both declined slightly around SugarHouse and in other areas of Philadelphia. Simply having more people in the area, drawn to SugarHouse, was cited as one possible deterrent, along with a strategic patrol district that coordinates with casino management. Wrote Johnson, “While our findings here do not settle the debate on casino and crime linkages, they … suggest a need for more neighborhood-level research.”