Murren: I heart CityCenter; Wynn: I heart China; Angle: I heart Latinos … plus Boyd’s new fragrance

MGM Resorts International and old ball and chain Dubai World have consummated a deal to extend $1.8 billion in CityCenter loans, a reworking that MGM CEO Jim Murren calls “a capital structure that’s much more … in keeping with a project like that.” The company’s so keen on the metaresort that it wants to buy Dubai World’s half — and why not? CityCenter is presently worth 31% of its $8.5 billion cost and the emirate is in desperate straits. Aria, Murren predicts, is “going to emerge as one of the profit leaders in the market.”

The CEO continues to predict a 2011 recovery, despite metrics to the contrary. A waterlogged housing market is likely to weigh upon the difficult-to-budge Vegas economy for at least another year, Unless nationwide housing values rise +5%, expect a painfully protracted Vegas comeback. (In that respect, Tuesday’s electoral results will be as relevant as last week’s newspaper.) Or so CB Richard Ellis Gaming Group forecasts. The Strip’s life-support system remains baccarat play and here the news is good: as much as a 20% increase next year. That’d be especially salubrious for Aria, which relies on baccarat for a disproportionate amount of its casino play.

Murren says airline capacity into McCarran International Airport will be higher in 2011, CBRE reports the opposite. A dwindling number of Baby Boomer customers is another cloud on the horizon. Convention business is coming back, no question, although some reports attribute that to the low price of post-bubble, post-CityCenter hotel rooms. (On the whole, trying to reposition Vegas as an ultra-exclusive getaway for the über-wealthy was a considerably worse idea than “family friendly” Vegas proved to be.) Vacationers, however, could find themselves paying higher ADRs as business traffic returns in force. Since CBRE’s forecast of CityCenter’s impact (dilutive) was more accurate than Murren’s, one probably has to go with CBRE’s crystal ball here. Even MGM spokesman Alan Feldman says Sin City is looking at a “very long and hard” road to recovery. Where were these voices of caution amidst the mass insanity of the bubble years?

I feel like Pollyanna, however, when I read the gloomy outlook of Hunter Hillegas. He sees Vegas entering an epoch he dubs “The Bummer Years,” likely to last until at least 2017. Ouch! However, Hillegas is far more reality-based than those optimism merchants who would have had us believe the Strip could absorb 15 or more luxury hotels in close succession, starting with Palazzo. The dinosaur skeletons lining Las Vegas Boulevard stand in mute rebuke to such hubris.

Steve Wynn has a short memory. As in can’t-remember-what-happened-last-week short. Throwing another verbal bouquet at the feet of the ChiComms, El Steve describes Macao‘s governmental policies as “steady.” Steady as in ratcheting up and down the number of visas issued? Steady as in threatening to repossess land if casino companies don’t build out fast enough? Steady as in flip-flopping on how many migrant workers you can employ? Yup, steady as a rock, those Macanese underbosses.

But … once you get past the first page of the article, Wynn vouchsafes some fascinating insights into his thought process. I won’t spoil the fun beyond saying that he creates his resorts to conflict with their surroundings. It sure beats listening to Gary Loveman rattle on about customer-database algorithms and such.

Wes Cas in play? A deal to unload 14 Columbia Sussex hotels has collapsed. Meaning the company has to raise cash, pronto, to pay an overdue $215 million loan. Now that companies like Penn National Gaming and investors such as Leonard Green are bargain-shopping in Vegas, could the Westin Casuarina be hocked for cash? It’s got serious encumberance issues of its own and cash flow is puny. ColSux is trapped in a spiderweb of interlocking loans, meaning that a once-fungible Vegas asset may be frozen unless somebody buys up the WesCas’ debt and takes it from behind, as it were.

Playing both sides. Although Boyd Gaming has been a “george” donor to the Nevada Democratic Party (but not nearly as much as Harrah’s Entertainment), it may recoup that dough by hosting a Sharron Angle rally at The Orleans today. After all, the Angle campaign has money to burn, baby, burn. Among the scheduled speakers is Angelina Jolie‘s dad. Given the extremely anti-Hispanic tenor of Angle’s campaign, I wonder how the Latino portion of Boyd’s workforce feels about having to staff this event, especially if they have to dodge inflamed cane- and walker-flailing old coots. (Maybe there’s a recondite economic-stimulus plan behind the bashing of Mexico, a burgeoning source of Vegas tourism, Hispanics being the second-largest demographic group among visitors, according to Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority statistics.)

Then again, Angle’s son went on the radio to say, “My mother, she loves the Hispanic people, she does.” I’m sure some of the casino owners who ran whites-only gambling halls on the Strip felt similar affection toward the black people, they did.

On a lighter note — as in cigarette lighter — it’s better for your lungs and nostrils to be hanging out The Orleans instead of the Gold Coast. While every locals casino seems to have been skimping on HVAC systems and air filters these last two years, Gold Coast has taken it a step farther. Whatever they’re pumping into the air over there catalyzes with the cigarette smoke to produce a smell exactly like those cheap metal ashtrays your grandparents used to use. You know the kind: a tin-ish saucer, weighted down by a plaid-covered beanbag. My maternal grandparents smoked like chimneys and darned if a visit to Gold Coast isn’t just like hanging out in family room down in Tyler, Texas, circa 1971.

Across town at Eastside Cannery, the smoke seems to get herded into thick clouds right inside the entrances. My personal theory is that this isn’t new smoke but that Cannery Casino Resorts bottled up some of the “air” (99% tar and nicotine, 1% oxygen) from Nevada Palace and periodically release it from cylinders, to give patrons a pleasant, nostalgia-laden aroma.