Planet Ho abdicates to Harrah’s

Sheraton Operating Corp. is bugging out of Planet Hollywood Resort — which has already lost some of its top management — and handing the keys to Harrah’s Entertainment. The latter will have something of a challenge filling the nearly 2,500 rooms considering that one of the terms of the changeover is that Planet Ho isn’t being hooked up to Total Rewards. That’s a bit like renting a car without wheels. Deprived of the Total Rewards pipeline, Harrah’s chances of effecting a near-term turnaround at Planet Ho appear miniscule.

The transfer of Marilyn Winn and her managerial team from The Rio doesn’t augur splendidly, either. During Winn’s tenure, The Rio became distinctly frayed around the edges, turning into the The Casino That Harrah’s Forgot. The exterior has gone so long without refurbishment that some of the patches of peeled paint are plainly visible from Caesars Palace — well across I-15 from The Rio. It approaches its 20th anniversary celebration looking every one of its years and then some. If Winn brings a similar ho-hum style to Planet Ho, CEO Gary Loveman can forget about hitching a ride on whatever excitement neighboring CityCenter is generating.

Anyway, the Aladdin/Planet has spun from the aegis of Richard Goeglein into that of London Clubs International, then Sheraton and now Harrah’s. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm.

Penn washes hands of F’bleau. Yesterday evening, Penn National Gaming informed the Wall Street Journal that its quixotic pursuit of Fontainebleau was definitively over. I say “quixotic” because F’bleau defied every criterion that CEO Peter Carlino laid out in terms of entering the Las Vegas market. (A certain Penn-cheerleading reporter must have wept bitter tears as he penned this dispatch.) Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief, with J.P. Morgan analysts writing that “management recognized that the true cost to complete was actually higher than their original estimates and, hence, the company prudently backed away.”

Having foreseen low returns from F-bleau, Morgan analysts said Penn’s white flag of surrender represented “managements [sic] stringent criteria for development or acquisition opportunities.” If so, where was that stringency when Penn flung itself at F-bleau initially? Even Cosmopolitan is further along, to say nothing of being hella closer to the action. Chalk this one up to Carlino being blinded by the lights of the Strip and temporarily losing his bearings.

Given the enormous cost required to finish the $2.9 billion (to date) casino-condo-megaresort and the supreme marketing challenge it will present, it looked as though F’bleau would — if pursued — have proven Carlino’s Waterloo. Other, unspecified bidders have been sniffing around, according to the bankruptcy court, but F’bleau looks 99.5% certain to wind up in Carl Icahn‘s shopping basket. Given the acumen Icahn displayed in the Vegas marketplace in the late Nineties and early Naughts, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better rescuer for this F-ed up project.

From today’s police blotter: “Homicide Suspect Arrested While Hiding in Porta-Potty” reads a Metro press release. No, really.