{"id":14450,"date":"2014-09-02T10:56:16","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T18:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=14450"},"modified":"2014-09-03T11:54:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-03T19:54:10","slug":"showboat-1987-2014-paris-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/showboat-1987-2014-paris-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"Showboat, 1987-2014; Paris, 1999-????"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Showboat_Atlantic_City\"<\/a>In the end, the Showboat Atlantic City<\/strong> had a good run of it, lasting almost three decades on the Boardwalk. It succumbed, in part, to wounds inflicted by owner Caesars Entertainment<\/strong>, which cut into its customer base by building Harrah’s Philadelphia<\/strong> and, toward the end, shifting its priority to a New York State<\/strong> casino. A few years of that attitude and, the next thing you know, Showboat security is yelling, “Go home! We’re closed” at taxi drivers.<\/p>\n

As 27-year Showboat veteran Arnoldo Leggi<\/strong> said between card tricks<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cI opened this place, and now I\u2019m going to close it.\u00a0I\u2019m not feeling too good about it.\u201d Retiree Art Pote<\/strong>, who lives at Trump Taj Mahal<\/strong>, could afford to be sanguine about the whole matter.\u00a0\u201cThis I call a shakeout. It\u2019s not a disaster.\u00a0We just cannot support 12 casinos. It could be the beginning of a better day.”<\/p>\n

\"Loveman<\/a>Try telling that to a newly unemployed Showboat worker. Caesars did what it could to mitigate the damage, finding new jobs for nearly a quarter<\/a> of the Showboat workforce. Others had to make do with a thank-you letter from Gary Loveman<\/strong>. If they can afford to hang on until jobs open up elsewhere, Fitch Rating<\/strong> sees a silver lining in this month’s dark clouds. It forecasts no casino closings in 2015. Better still, most of Showboat’s, Revel<\/strong>‘s and Trump Plaza<\/strong>‘s revenue will stay in Atlantic City.<\/p>\n

The most immediate benefits will flow to Borgata, Harrah’s Resort<\/strong> and the Golden Nugget<\/strong>, Fitch predicts. But it also sees a trickle-down from which\u00a0Bally’s<\/strong>, Caesars Palace<\/strong> and Trump Taj all benefit:\u00a0\u201cMost of the closings are at the ends of the Boardwalk, leaving a cluster of remaining casinos (including Taj Mahal, Caesars and Bally\u2019s) that should see a sizable lift in business from the closures.\u201d Fitch also noted that the state’s 9.25% gaming tax left casinos with more money to spend on promotional allowances.<\/p>\n

As for the near term, “It\u2019s going to hurt, but the ones that remain will do better,\u201d Pote\u00a0told the New York Times<\/em>. We’ll see if Mr. Pote is so sanguine if\u00a0the sharks start circling the Taj. Unlike many, he is a fan of the business plan of Revel, slated to close tomorrow<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cThey had a great idea, but the economy was just terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frequent Revel customer Andrew Tannenbaum<\/strong> had his own take on what did in the megaresort:\u00a0\u201cCompared to other casinos, this was a lot \"revel_0606\"<\/a>nicer. There wasn\u2019t the riff-raff here. But I think they overspent, went overboard and got in over their heads. When the Borgata opened, that should have been the last of the high-end casinos for Atlantic City.\u201d Of course, Borgata was supposed to begin a new era of spending for Atlantic City<\/strong>, inspiring a fresh wave of resorts. All it ended up doing was redistributing market share in the city, mostly to Boyd Gaming<\/strong>‘s benefit. Once Pennsylvania<\/strong> legalized casinos, the handwriting should have been on the wall for any casino product at the shore.<\/p>\n

* Following in the footsteps of many other writers<\/a>, the New York Times<\/em> (somewhat belatedly) looks into the gun-tourism craze here in Las \"Learning.jpg\"<\/a>Vegas<\/strong>. The Times<\/em>‘ coverage coincides with a tragic shooting-range accident in Arizona<\/strong>. The incident proves, if nothing else, that putting an Uzi<\/strong> in the hands of a nine-year-old is probably a bad idea<\/a>, one that will give the child nightmares for years.<\/p>\n

Compared to restaurant, show and nightclub tabs on the Strip, gun ranges offer a value proposition, which is why this cottage industry has grown like crazy<\/a>. Adrenaline surges are an unspoken part of the compact between Las Vegas and tourists, and few Sin City experiences pack the jolt that handling exotic firearms does.<\/p>\n

* Speaking of value propositions, Caesars just celebrated the 15th anniversary of Paris-Las Vegas<\/strong>, the last Strip casino constructed for less than $1 billion (depending on whether you count SLS Las Vegas<\/strong> or not). Then-Hilton Gaming<\/strong> took a thrifty approach, building Paris contiguously with Bally’s Las Vegas<\/strong>, piggybacking onto the latter’s physical plant. The result was not without its flaws, such as the awkwardly configured showroom, but it did gangbusters business right out of the gate and deserves to remembered as the end of an era in Las Vegas, one in which investors could expect a high return on their money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the end, the Showboat Atlantic City had a good run of it, lasting almost three decades on the Boardwalk. It succumbed, in part, to wounds inflicted by owner Caesars Entertainment, which cut into its customer base by building Harrah’s … 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":[65,23,60,14,7,101,95,157,162,9,129,19,169,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14450"}],"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=14450"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14475,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14450\/revisions\/14475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}