Alex Yemenidjian has busted out a new logo for his Strip casino:
Hey, it’s a start. Still no word on a new evening show for the Tiffany Theater (and somehow I don’t think Dirk Arthur is going to cut it as a long-term proposition). Anything being possible, perhaps trademarking a new logo will circumvent that “Tropicana” lease-back clause that Tropicana Entertainment CEO Scott Butera snuck past Yemenidjian … but the Tropicana Las Vegas had better set aside $2 million just in case.
Success breeds development. With M Resort a smash right of the box, naysayers to the contrary, it’s proving to be the catalyst for at least one more casino development. The shrouded-in-mystery Raymond Shapiro project would sit immediately north of M and would — especially if M’s amenities get fully built — synergize with the additional retail/amusement development that are in M’s plans.
Industry wisdom, validated by experience, maintains that casinos do better when clustered — and the Anthony Marnell III and proposed Shapiro properties might even get Gary Goett‘s long-stalled Olympia Gaming project out of its holding pattern. (It would be on the opposite site of Las Vegas Boulevard from the Shapiro parcel, closer to I-15.)
The loser in all of this is Station Casinos‘ stuck-in-limbo Inspirada casino project. By the time both that and the master-planned community upon which it was predicated are ready to go, Shapiro and Goett could be as firmly entrenched as Marnell. But, in this lending climate, the operative phrase for any casino proposal remains, “Show me the money.”
Penn to locals: “Screw you.” For execs at Penn National Gaming, fortifying themselves against competition from in nearby counties supersedes the good will of their constituency. In Jefferson County, home to Charles Town Races & Slots, voters rejected a request for table games in a 2007 vote that went 56%/44% against Penn.
Undeterred, Penn is going to get back in voters’ grille this November, it appears, by dint of either the Nov. 7 ballot or a special election a month later. According to J.P. Morgan analysts, the Jefferson electorate is pondering zoning restrictions “to slow down the influx of people from the greater Washington, D.C. area and the conversion of farms to subdivisions.” If that’s indeed the temper of the neighborhood, Penn’s persistence in trying to drive more traffic into the area seems perverse … if understandable from a dollars-and-cents standpoint.
