{"id":4058,"date":"2010-07-15T13:12:28","date_gmt":"2010-07-15T21:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=4058"},"modified":"2020-03-27T07:47:05","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T15:47:05","slug":"wynn-beantown-adelson-likes-it-rough-chico-station-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wynn-beantown-adelson-likes-it-rough-chico-station-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Wynn Beantown?; Adelson likes it rough; “Chico Station,” etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

“Two can play this game.”<\/strong> That’s the message coming from Steve Wynn<\/strong>. Since his former Philadelphia<\/strong> partners are now playing footsie with Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong>, Wynn is turning his back on the City of Brotherly Love and shifting his gaze to Boston<\/strong>. He says that a Beantown project is the only thing that could take precedence over further development in Macao<\/strong>. That’s quite a compliment and a Wynn-quality property would be a considerable feather in Boston’s cap and economic sparkplug for the sputtering development where it would be situated.<\/p>\n

\"\"Wynn’s biggest obstacle — and it’s a considerable hurdle — is Speaker of the House Robert DeLeo<\/strong> (left<\/em>) who clearly intends to “juice in” Suffolk Downs<\/strong> with a racino deal. A de facto<\/em> Wynn ally is POTUS pal Gov. Deval Patrick<\/strong> (could this be why the Wynner’s been tamping down the anti-Obama rhetoric of late?) who calls the inclusion of designated racinos a form of “no-bid” contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He’s got a good point there<\/strong>. Tracks like Suffolk Downs will be “gifted” with slots outright, whilst Wynn, Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> (staking out a spot in the ‘burbs), Mohegan Sun<\/strong> and others have to jump through hoops for a tiny number of resort licenses. One proposal that doesn’t look so hot on paper is the Crossroads<\/strong> project, slated for Milford<\/strong>. Would-be operator Warner Gaming<\/strong> (mostly comprised of refugees<\/a> — or LBO casualties? — from Station Casinos<\/strong>) recently turned tail and ran from its management deal with Greektown Casino<\/strong>, a move that does not inspire confidence. If Massachusetts<\/strong> is going to put so many eggs in the casino basket, it needs to go with proven operators, not tinhorns.<\/p>\n


\nLas Vegas Sands<\/strong> CEO Sheldon Adelson<\/strong> may say he’d rather make love than war with Marina Bay Sands<\/strong>‘ virgin conventioneers, the Inter-Pacific Bar Association<\/strong>. If so, he’s got a fairly brutal notion of lovemaking, jamming the IPBA up with a second lawsuit in which Sands doubles its monetary claim against the legal conference up to $466.5K. It sounds like the association is digging for protracted trench warfare with Sheldon.<\/p>\n

The moral in all of this nastiness: If you’re doing a “soft opening” (the single dumbest concept in the casino industry), don’t<\/em> book conventions during that period and use your conventioneers as guinea pigs. The longer this drags on, the more organizations that are going to have — pardon the pun — reservations about booking their events at Marina Bay.<\/p>\n

Count The Orleans in<\/strong> — and the Palms<\/strong> out — of the Vegas casinos that shove the heavy attar of cheap perfume up your nostrils<\/a>. The sickly sweet stench of Palazzo<\/strong> is probably the single worst offender. Casino executives seem remarkably susceptible to the notion that the most efficacious means of dealing with unpleasant casino-floor smells (prime offender: cheap cigars) is to sweep it under a carpet of cologne. That merely replaces on noxious aroma with another. Would somebody please tell AromaSys<\/strong> and its competitors to peddle their whorehouse fragrances elsewhere?<\/p>\n

(Kudos to Ameristar Casinos<\/strong> for following Aria<\/strong>‘s lead and installing “air curtains” on its table games. Dealers are put through enough indignities without the life-threatening one of second-hand smoke, too.)<\/p>\n

\"\"While we’re on the subject<\/strong> of customer relations, S&G<\/em> readers are always recommended to sign up for Raving Consulting<\/strong>‘s “Raving Perspectives” newsletter. (Today’s missive deals with Hertz<\/strong> and a rental agent from Hell.) Another valuable resource, one I only discovered today, is the Casinos, Brands, and More<\/em><\/a> blog by Isle of Capri Casinos<\/strong> Vice President of Brand Marketing Julia Carcamo<\/strong>. She comes to Isle by way of Wynn Resorts<\/strong> and Harrah’s (the Phil Satre<\/strong> era Harrah’s, not the dreadful Gary Loveman<\/strong> one), so she’s learned from the best. I envy her fleur-de-lis<\/em> bullet points — a nod to Isle’s St. Louis<\/strong> HQ.<\/p>\n

Station Casinos’ tribal-expansion plans<\/strong> hit a bump in the road this week. The D.C. District Court of Appeals<\/strong> faulted Bush II’s Interior Department for “arbitrary” handling of the land-in-trust process. Given the generally unsympathetic tenor of the previous administration toward tribal casinos, its laissez-faire attitude toward what we’ll call “Chico Station<\/strong>” comes as rather a pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Two can play this game.” That’s the message coming from Steve Wynn. Since his former Philadelphia partners are now playing footsie with Harrah’s Entertainment, Wynn is turning his back on the City of Brotherly Love and shifting his gaze to … 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":[40,60,117,64,7,67,62,53,112,39,95,33,111,25,12,108,74,57,32,8,9,20,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058"}],"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=4058"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26559,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4058\/revisions\/26559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}