{"id":241,"date":"2009-07-02T18:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2009\/7\/2\/Tropicana-of-Confusion"},"modified":"2009-07-02T18:22:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-02T22:22:00","slug":"tropicana-of-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/tropicana-of-confusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Tropic(ana) of Confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" News reports are at sixes and sevens of just how much of the Tropicana Las Vegas<\/strong> is now owned by Onex Corp<\/strong>. For instance, Bloomberg<\/strong> states that Onex's stake represents 60%<\/a> of the $440 million owed on the property (or would that be 60% of a theoretical $733 million\/$21.5 million per acre?), while the Calgary Herald<\/em> confusingly spreads Onex's $440 million — or would that be $264 million? — commitment between the Vegas and non-Vegas holdings of Tropicana Entertainment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Herald<\/em>, in an obvious boo-boo, mis-reports that TropEnt was split into Atlantic City and non-A.C. halves. Seriously, once the new LV Trop administration starts taking reporters' calls, could somebody straighten out if Onex's commitment is $440 million, six-tenths of that or some more-confusing permutation altogether? The dueling numbers are starting to make my head spin.<\/p>\n

The Calgary paper<\/strong>, though, discover the interesting wrinkle that TropEnt CEO Scott Butera<\/strong> is trying to make off<\/a> with the Vegas Trop name and lease it back to Onex at $10 million a year. Clever, yes. And, if the courts allow it, Butera's got Onex over a barrel because relaunching old properties with new names has been a losing proposition in Las Vegas. Bereft of its name, the Trop could easily become a big-ass Hooters Hotel<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Amidst this turmoil, Alex Yemenidjian<\/strong> has taken the reins at the Trop with an emphasis on customer service<\/a>. (Interestingly, if you read the non-R-J<\/em> coverage, Onex has partly reneged on its capex commitments, rolling back a $100 million reinvestment to $75 million.) The proposed South Beach retheming will have to be done in stages but, hey, that's the way they used to do it.<\/p>\n

One need only look at the corpse of the Lady Luck<\/strong> or the gravesite of the Stardust<\/strong> to see the perils of a do-it-all-at-once makeover. And it beats the heck out of Butera's 2014-2016 timeline for even beginning <\/em>work. While Butera may have been an improvement on Columbia Sussex<\/strong> CEO William J. Yung III<\/strong>, his diffident attitude toward the LV Trop will probably leave few regretting his departure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News reports are at sixes and sevens of just how much of the Tropicana Las Vegas is now owned by Onex Corp. For instance, Bloomberg states that Onex's stake represents 60% of the $440 million owed on the property (or … 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":[48,23,15,53,9,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241"}],"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=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}