{"id":21229,"date":"2018-02-21T10:13:12","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T18:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=21229"},"modified":"2018-02-21T10:13:12","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T18:13:12","slug":"savior-for-lucky-dragon-louisiana-city-shops-for-riverboat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/savior-for-lucky-dragon-louisiana-city-shops-for-riverboat\/","title":{"rendered":"Savior for Lucky Dragon?; Louisiana city shops for riverboat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things go from bad to worse at ill-named Lucky Dragon Casino<\/strong>. Already it was looking at a foreclosure auction tomorrow. Now owner Andrew Fonfa<\/strong> has put it in Chapter 11<\/a>. The move was rationalized on the grounds that letting the bankruptcy court auction the resort \"\"would preserve the greatest amount of value. Conceivably someone like Station Casinos<\/strong> could snap up Lucky Dragon and mothball it, simply to keep competition off the market. However, both Station and Boyd Gaming<\/strong> found Lucky Dragon no threat to their Asian-centric Palace Station<\/strong> and Gold Coast<\/strong> casinos. Besides, as Union Gaming<\/strong> analyst John DeCree<\/strong> puts it, Lucky Dragon is going to have to “broaden” a business plan that\u00a0\u201ccaters to only one customer segment.\u201d Given the number of creditors with claims upon the property and the unlikelihood of recouping the casino’s $143 million cost, EB-5<\/strong> investors will almost surely find themselves left out in the cold. You can count out Derek Stevens<\/strong> as a potential rescuer. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal<\/em> was “in a pretty tough location.” (A reputed policy of sweating comps can’t have helped.)<\/p>\n

VitalVegas<\/em> tips Alex Meruelo<\/strong> as Lucky Dragon’s likely savior<\/a>. He could certainly run it in tandem with SLS Las Vegas<\/strong> — likely to be renamed Grand Sahara<\/strong> — and exercise economies of scale. Some of the aforesaid economies have the Culinary Union<\/strong> all het up, as it expects Meruelo to try and oust the union<\/a> from SLS. Speaking of EB-5 investors, they’ll take a haircut when Meruelo closes the SLS deal. The latest offer on the table was 20% of the resort’s equity value. Since they accuse current ownership of continuing to lose money we’ll see if Meruelo can apply a tourniquet to that bleeding stump.<\/p>\n

* It’s a match made in Heaven, or so it appears. Diamond Jacks<\/strong> wants to weigh anchor and leave the Shreveport<\/strong> market. City officials in Monroe<\/strong> are looking to pull back money lost to Shreveport and Vicksburg<\/strong>. Solution? Bring a riverboat casino<\/a> to Monroe. One of the selling points will be good jobs. “We’re talking 15 to 18 dollars an hour, people on the floor and then higher-ups make even more money,” said\u00a0South Side Economic Development District<\/strong> Executive Director Charles Theus<\/strong>. However, there are several shoals to be navigated, including designation of the riverfront as a gambling area and approval by parish-wide vote. In other words, it’s a long shot at this point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Things go from bad to worse at ill-named Lucky Dragon Casino. Already it was looking at a foreclosure auction tomorrow. Now owner Andrew Fonfa has put it in Chapter 11. The move was rationalized on the grounds that letting 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":[235,60,151,155,84,206,35,195,57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229"}],"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=21229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21230,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21229\/revisions\/21230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}