{"id":1019,"date":"2008-11-07T14:25:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-07T22:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/11\/7\/Aztar-sale-flops"},"modified":"2023-07-16T05:48:06","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T13:48:06","slug":"aztar-sale-flops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/aztar-sale-flops\/","title":{"rendered":"Aztar sale flops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tropicana Entertainment<\/strong> President Scott Butera<\/strong> had a $225 million deal to sell Casino Aztar<\/em> in hand. Not good enough, he said. Thus, a second round of bids was solicited. The grand total number of offers received: one.<\/p>\n

This lays the groundwork for Butera to do what I think he’s been meaning to do all along: Declare the lone bid inadequate (maybe even a “fire sale”), much like the previous Eldorado Resorts<\/strong> deal he’s trying to vacate. The next step would be to petition the State of Indiana to be allowed to resume control of Casino Aztar<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Whether the state plays ball is another matter. Evansville<\/strong>‘s mayor, Jonathan Weinzapfel<\/strong> told WEHT-TV he “looks forward to a new owner.” Maybe my English is rusty, but that sure sounds like he wants no part of TropEnt, even in its post-William J. Yung III<\/strong> incarnation. Having been singed aplenty ever since the Aztar Corp.<\/strong> sale went through, Weinzapfel’s “once burned, twice shy” frostiness is quite understandable. Butera’s persuasive skills are going to be tested in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n

Having also scuttled the sale of Horizon Vicksburg<\/strong>, Butera’s plan is obviously to reconstitute TropEnt at full strength (including the Atlantic City Tropicana).<\/strong> Not only would this increase the potential for cross-marketing the merged Columbia Sussex<\/strong>\/Aztar portfolio to consumers, it’s undoubtedly crossed Butera’s mind that TropEnt is a much better resale proposition if kept intact … not peddled off piece by little piece, as Yung was doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tropicana Entertainment President Scott Butera had a $225 million deal to sell Casino Aztar in hand. Not good enough, he said. Thus, a second round of bids was solicited. The grand total number of offers received: one. This lays the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,68,35,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32755,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1019\/revisions\/32755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}