{"id":4263,"date":"2010-08-04T15:42:36","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T23:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=4263"},"modified":"2010-08-04T15:42:36","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T23:42:36","slug":"ruffin-no-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/ruffin-no-bull\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruffin: No bull"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Treasure Island<\/strong> owner Phil Ruffin<\/strong> and his beloved mechanical bull made a guest appearance on CNBC<\/strong> and, characteristically, pulled no punches. (Ruffin, that is. The bull had no comment.) Even as MGM Resorts International<\/strong>, Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong> and Las Vegas Sands<\/strong> talk “recovery,” Ruffin sees continued softening of demand on the Strip and no turnaround until next year. He brands Fontainebleau<\/strong> “toxic,” thanks to its mind-boggling completion budget and the costs attendant upon running such a behemoth. Dr. Ruffin also pronounces the condo market “dead,” with joint venture Trump International<\/strong> severely undersold and only marginally profitable, by his account. Once you get used to Ruffin’s increasingly Liberace<\/strong>-like countenance, he makes a helluva lot more sense than most of his competitors on the Strip.<\/p>\n

For instance, if MGM Grand<\/span>\/Mirage<\/span>\/Resorts International\/[Your Name Here] thinks it can get 14X cash flow for The Mirage<\/strong> — in this economy<\/em> — you’ve gotta wonder what’s in the drinking water at MGM HQ. Maybe you could have found somebody euphoric enough to have paid that multiple when the Strip economy was at its most overheated, three years back. But that ship sailed long ago and with so much undeveloped (and unfinanceable) real estate gathering tumbleweeds along Las Vegas Boulevard South<\/strong>, it’ll be a cold day in Hell before somebody forks over essentially a 100% premium for what is no longer one of MGM’s top three Strip properties.<\/p>\n

Ruffin makes a stark contrast<\/strong> to an apparently delusional<\/a> Donald Trump<\/strong>. Even though condo prices have fallen as far as 70% at Trump Int’l, now starting around $155K, Das Donald actually says, “We’re doing really well.” Then again, Trump is so perennially full of it, he might actually believe that upside-down logic of his. But even if Trump can’t give away timeshares …<\/p>\n

What kind of person buys a Veer Towers<\/strong> condo? A millionaire like Brian Fettner<\/strong>, that’s who:
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Treasure Island owner Phil Ruffin and his beloved mechanical bull made a guest appearance on CNBC and, characteristically, pulled no punches. (Ruffin, that is. The bull had no comment.) Even as MGM Resorts International, Harrah’s Entertainment and Las Vegas Sands … 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":[82,28,42,14,59,7,11,119,12,9,19,21,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4263"}],"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=4263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4264,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4263\/revisions\/4264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}