Four hundred Las Vegans will find themselves pink-slipped by Tamares Group, whose latest bequest to downtown will be an Armistice Day closure of most of the Plaza, its showroom and certain portions of the casino floor excepted. If the tenure of front man Bobby Ray Harris has been incredibly forgettable, his exit will not be, as successor Anthony F. Santo will inherit what he describes as “12 months of hard times.” (It’s difficult to imagine times getting much harder for Tamares’ rattletrap casinos without their going out of business altogether.) Or was it Santo who sold Tamares on the necessity of extreme measures, with the outgoing Harris taking the role of hatchet man?
The much-praised Firefly restaurant will remain in operation and Tamares announced today it will extend The Rat Pack is Back! for three years. The last bastion of downtown bingo, the Plaza will be moving those operations across the street. Tamares is now down to one operational hotel (the Las Vegas Club), though it’s careful to keep some form of gambling operation going at the Plaza — not repeating the mistake of the Lady Luck, which shut down everything and tried to eke out an extensive reconstruction on the cash flow from a couple of nearby restaurants. We all know how that ended.
While today’s shocker appears to end years of shilly-shallying by shabby Tamares, the company hasn’t completely evacuated Fantasyland. The proposed $20 million renovation budget is a smidgen of what the Tropicana Las Vegas and Golden Nugget have spent on their most recent makeovers. Even as Harris declares that the time for half-measures has passed, Tamares U.S. Real Estate proposes to remedy the problem with … more half measures. Perhaps Tamares is finally getting serious about competing in Downtown but it’s waited until awfully late in the game to formulate a strategy.
20 million will barely bring that thing up to code. That casino needs a sky bridge. People do not walk across the street to go to that casino. Been there when Fremont street casinos were full, but the Plaza was empty.
The Plaza closed its North tower in November last year, and apparently was still closed as late as last month, per a recent guest commenting on TripAdvisor. So technically they are closing the *remaining* rooms.
The previous stories announcing the $20 million “investment” said it would be spread among the three Tamares hotels. Now it appears that it would be spent on the Plaza only. I guess that the Western & Vegas Club will continue deteriorating.
Tamares is supposedly using a $20 million loan for the project. I have my doubts that any reputable lender would lend them that kind of money. If I were Mr. Santo I would shout, “Show me the money!” before signing any renovation contracts.
Personally, I think the hotel will never reopen, at least under the present owners. They’ll close it down for awhile while stringing Santo & the city along with a story about problems securing all the loan money. They’ll put some money into the casino, but nothing like the amount needed. Santo will leave in disgust after being lied to too many times.
They’ll leave the towers vacant for more than a year… then offer Mayor Goodman a deal to sell one or more towers to the city so it/they can be imploded to make way for the mayor’s ‘gateway’ to Symphony Park.
The casino will be shut down soon after, for lack of guest-customers.
Another Las Vegas landmark bites the dust.
Just to show you how long its been out dated and dilapidated, they filmed Back to the Future there, and did not have to re-decorate to get the retro look. Retro to 1960. It still looks that way today. $20 mil will not do too much. It will be interesting how many floors get renovated when they re-open.
About two years ago (September 15, 2008) Lehman Borothers went bankrupt, other banks borrowed billions of dollars from the government to survive and the economy hit the skids. Two years later our country is still struggling and Las Vegas is affected because people don’t have any extra money to spend anymore. Airline prices have gone up and in the last two years there has been a 15-20% decrease in flights to Las Vegas.
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