Recently I was asked about the future of the Key Largo Casino, long defunct — a casualty of last decade’s condo craze. The photo above is some handiwork of Colliers International and I’ve borrowed it to illustrate the excellent geographical position of Key Largo: just west of Terrible’s and a couple blocks north of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. So you could develop some critical gaming mass here, especially since the land still has an unrestricted gaming entitlement.
Trouble is, the owner wants $5.95 million/acre, and the structure’s been sitting derelict so long you’d undoubtedly either have to gut it or bulldoze the place and start over. It’d be strictly a locals-market play and, at that price, you’d have to want to get in pretty bad. It’s also a small footprint of land. Station Casinos has passed on better opportunities even closer to the Strip (the Westin Casuarina, for one) and may be in the process of offloading a big real estate parcel. (I’m still looking into that.) Boyd Gaming is in stand-pat mode and Cannery Casino Resorts would balk at the asking price. Unless the Nevada Legislature is prepared to waive the 200-hotel-room requirement for new casinos, sites like these appear to have little future.
Stick a fork in it. It’s been pretty much assumed that Gary Goett‘s $750 million Southern Highlands Casino-Resort was dead. Now you can write its epitaph. Although Collier’s doesn’t list the failsino (which was to have opened almost three years ago) on its site, a billboard across the road from M Resort advertises 100 acres for sale. It just so happens that SHC-R was to have been built on 100 acres “at Interstate 15 and St. Rose Parkway,” that very spot. One can’t blame Goett for folding his hand. The success of SHC-R was predicated upon retail and residential development having reached the I-15/St. Rose interchange years ago. Hasn’t happened. Also, he didn’t have a name-brand operating partner for his casino and going forward would mean butting heads with soon-to-be M owner Penn National Gaming. You might say the market finally got the developer’s Goett.
My apologies to all S&G readers for having to be subjected to a personal insult from some anonymous troll against reader Mike Alexakis that made it through the spam filter and into our e-mail in-boxes. The offending party also posted false information about himself and has been blacklisted from commenting in this forum again. Once more, my deepest apologies.
LOL Darn, I must have missed it. No worries, I’m quite thick-skinned. I have been told that heckeling me is like heckeling Sam Kinison.