{"id":476,"date":"2009-03-26T14:23:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2009\/3\/26\/Trop-snoozes-loses"},"modified":"2023-05-20T08:46:33","modified_gmt":"2023-05-20T16:46:33","slug":"trop-snoozes-loses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/trop-snoozes-loses\/","title":{"rendered":"Trop snoozes, loses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like a hot potato, the Tropicana Las Vegas<\/strong> continues to bounce from Columbia Sussex<\/strong> to Tropicana Entertainment<\/strong> and now maybe into the hands of Alex Yemenidjian<\/strong><\/a>. (This management-contract arrangement looks more like laying the groundwork for a sale … if so, thanks for taking S&G<\/em>‘s advice, guys. It’s worth what you pay for it.)<\/p>\n

A top price of $380 million can be viewed either as a bargain — $11 million an acre, a long<\/em> way down from the berzerk price paid by ColSux two-plus years ago — or a boondoggle, seeing as even $380 mil represents an 84X cash-flow multiple. Somebody’s got a job ahead of them.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, TropEnt CEO Scott Butera<\/strong> hasn’t had his eye on the ball. Now, there wasn’t anything he could do to keep the Titanic<\/em><\/a> and Bodies<\/a> exhibits from jumping ship to Luxor<\/strong>. But he pulled the plug on Folies Bergere<\/em><\/a> and the Comedy Stop<\/strong>. Then, having given magician Dirk Arthur the boot, Butera’s minions had to reverse field and grant the illusionist a reprieve through September<\/a>. (So if you go to the Trop in April, the only entertainment offering will be an afternoon magic show. That’s it.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Just another day at the Trop<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As of Sunday,<\/strong> the Trop will have no (as in “zero”) marquee attractions to tout. So it’s an understatement to say that an agreement “in principle” with comedian Bobby Slayton<\/strong> doesn’t come a day too soon and a formal contract needs to be inked yesterday.<\/p>\n

When Nero played an as-yet-uninvented instrument, Rome burned. Whilst Butera fiddles, the Trop merely continues fade. Unless TropEnt’s song and dance about repositioning the Trop is just a soft-shoe act, playing for time until the whole problem can be deposited in Yemenidjian’s lap.<\/p>\n

E<\/strong>ver since he took the reins<\/strong> at TropEnt, Butera has been fixated upon getting the Tropicana Atlantic City<\/strong> back (which he should) and, secondarily, with regaining Casino Aztar<\/em> in Indiana<\/strong> (which he did). But the LV Trop has clearly been a low priorty and now he’s washing his hands of it. Which means the real problem won’t be Yemenidjian’s but that of Trop employees and their equally neglected customers.<\/p>\n

Patience, thy name<\/strong> is a Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong> bondholder. A surprisingly large number of these long-suffering souls are willing to wait just shy of a decade<\/a> to redeem their distressed Harrah’s debt. They’re better men than I.<\/p>\n

This book<\/strong> looks like a must-have<\/a>. And, no, Huntington Press<\/strong> didn’t publish it. But we do have a nifty new edition of Whale Hunt in the Desert<\/em>, thank you for asking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like a hot potato, the Tropicana Las Vegas continues to bounce from Columbia Sussex to Tropicana Entertainment and now maybe into the hands of Alex Yemenidjian. (This management-contract arrangement looks more like laying the groundwork for a sale … if … 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":[48,65,23,15,28,14,4,7,68,53,8,9,21,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476"}],"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=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32655,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/32655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}