{"id":1771,"date":"2010-01-04T17:14:01","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T01:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2011-09-21T16:30:56","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T00:30:56","slug":"damsel-in-distress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/damsel-in-distress\/","title":{"rendered":"Damsel in distress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until 2005, when Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong> devoured Park Place Entertainment<\/strong>, its flagship property in Las Vegas<\/strong> was The Rio<\/strong>. Since then the lady has fallen upon hard times. During the period 2007-09, while Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman<\/strong> blew hundreds of millions of dollars on the superfluous Octavius Tower<\/strong> over at Caesars Palace<\/strong>, The Rio went begging for so much as a coat of fresh paint. In these pictures, taken this morning, it looks like it’s not seen any external maintenance in the last two-plus years.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN1787\"ND’s Fuego The Club<\/strong> closed back on June 13<\/a>, but you wouldn’t know it to look at the Rio marquee …<\/p>\n

\"DSCN1788\"… nor can anyone be troubled to fix the blanched “o” in “Rio.” This sort of penny-pinching and malign neglect of Harrah’s physical assets was only too predictable back when Loveman steered the company into the arms of Apollo (Mis)Management<\/strong> and Texas Pacific Group<\/strong>, but neither rah-rah Wall Street<\/strong> analysts nor worshipful Nevada<\/strong> regulators dared mention that ugly inevitability.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN1790\"Seriously, how much would it cost to slap some red paint up there on the parapet? Or to stock the Las Vegas Review-Journal<\/em> in one’s sundries store? Corporate jets and executive salaries remain sacrosanct but the customer experience is clearly expendable.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN1791\"I’m not sure if it comes through at this size, but the paint has almost completely worn off some of the vertical beams on The Rio’s west side. Memo to Harrah’s<\/em>: Instead of treating your former crown jewel (and the current site of the World Series of Poker<\/strong>) like a dump, why don’t you sell it to a company that would give a damn? Penn National Gaming<\/strong>, where are you when we need you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until 2005, when Harrah’s Entertainment devoured Park Place Entertainment, its flagship property in Las Vegas was The Rio. Since then the lady has fallen upon hard times. During the period 2007-09, while Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman blew hundreds of millions … 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":[28,14,4,7,69,25,38,132],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771"}],"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=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7565,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/7565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}