{"id":7338,"date":"2011-08-16T14:33:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T22:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=7338"},"modified":"2019-09-13T11:31:53","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T19:31:53","slug":"taking-back-harrahs-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/taking-back-harrahs-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking back (Harrah’s) America"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Ever-vigilant in his watch over “The Borg” (aka<\/em> Caesars Entertainment<\/strong>), Vegas Tripping<\/em> author Chuck Monster<\/strong> has been keeping a gimlet eye on the revival of Project Linq<\/strong>. Granted access to internal Caesars documents, Mr. Monster reveals that the much-needed makeover of the O’Shea’s<\/strong>\/Imperial Palace<\/strong> slum<\/span> neighborhood is but the first phase in something much bigger<\/a>: the long-dormant Harrah’s America<\/strong> mega-\u00fcber<\/em>-ultraresort, also fleetingly known as “Epicentre<\/strong>.” (Something tells me casino developers are going to be avoiding titles with “Center” for a while.)<\/p>\n

\"\"Questions remain begged<\/strong>, such as: What will the area use for emergency-vehicle access once the street between the Flamingo<\/strong> and O’Shea’s becomes a retail mall? The best news is that the cesspool known as O’Shea’s will become history, to replaced by a mid-market version of Crystals<\/strong>. At least some of the Japonaiserie<\/em> will be scrapped off Imperial Palace and its hotel towers might actually receive the implosion that then-Harrah’s Entertainment<\/strong> planned for them when it bought the place in 2005<\/a>. If aforesaid demolition eventually engulfed the Warsaw Pact<\/strong> “architecture” of claustrophobic Harrah’s Las Vegas<\/strong>, few would protest.<\/p>\n

\"\"Of course<\/strong>, this seems the very devil of a time to go to Wall Street<\/strong> for financing … and never you mind that $18 billion in long-term debt hanging over the company like the Sword of Damocles<\/strong>. Heck, Caesars has been pleading poverty and rattling its tin cup at Nevada<\/strong> taxpayers in an effort to get a vanity stadium built out back of where its Ferris wheel will arise<\/a>. Still and all, the sooner the first phase gets underway, the better. Besides, taking “Impotent Palace” and Harrah’s LV out of action will enable Caesars — and its competitors — to raise room rates on the Strip, by dint of manufacturing a supply\/demand crunch. Strangely, the “Harrah’s America” idea was being pitched to Wall Street even as CEO Gary Loveman<\/strong> was hopping an E-ticket ride on the crazy train, shopping the mother of all LBOs to private-equity marks<\/span> sober investors like Texas Pacific Group<\/strong> and Apollo Management<\/strong>. It was\/is a grandiose 10-year scheme<\/a> that should have been in Year Four at this point. Had Loveman not gone loco<\/em>, we’d be writing about Imperial Palace in the past tense, as we pondered the impending implosion of Harrah’s LV.<\/p>\n

\"\"Once you get past<\/strong> the “big swinging dick” rhetoric of CFO Jonathan Halkyard<\/strong>‘s tumescent Power Point presentation to Bank of America<\/strong> (available from S&G<\/em> upon request), one sees that Harrah’s was in a period of strong cash-flow growth in 2006 and should have been able to fund the early stages of the master plan even in a Recession … if only Loveman hadn’t kneecapped his own company. Regardless of circumstances, scrapping a refit of Bally’s Wild Wild West<\/strong> in Atlantic City<\/strong> with the better-performing Horseshoe<\/strong> brand was a mistake. But it’s a good thing Loveman & Co. held off demolishing Harrah’s Marina<\/strong> in favor of something that looks suspiciously like Wynncore<\/strong>. The casino-hotel in its current form is regularly a top performer in the market (if it ain’t broke …) and a new Atlantic City megaresort could easily have run afoul of the monetary problems that stalled Revel<\/strong> for months on end.<\/p>\n

\"\"The demolition of Bally’s Las Vegas<\/strong>, to be replaced with a Strip-side, Horseshoe-branded casino is an idea that’s been kicking around for a good six years<\/a> … the worst-kept secret of the Loveman regime. It was to have begun two years ago, but with s<\/a>o many other Strip resorts-to-be stuck in the mud and waiting for demand to resume, it would be surprising were Bally’s to be imploded and rebuilt in this decade, if ever. Existing<\/em> Caesars properties are in embarrassing states of disrepair and have been for years. Where’s the money for that? Or for Clark County<\/strong>-approved remakes of the Caesars Palace<\/strong> “pedestrian realm” and of access from the Las Vegas Strip<\/strong> into Paris-Las Vegas<\/strong> that have been gathering dust since the last three election cycles? As for pipe dreams like Baha Mar<\/strong> in the Bahamas<\/strong> and El Reino<\/strong> in Spain<\/strong> (whose logo was, aptly, Don Quixote<\/strong>), those went up in smoke along with Caesars’ credit rating. Now the company’s shopping around for hotel-development deals<\/a> in India<\/strong> (“Horseshoe Mumbai”?).<\/p>\n

\"\"“We will be careful of taking out a lot of capacity at once<\/em>,” Halkyard pontificated to the money men. Too bad he didn’t exercise the same circumspection toward taking on a lot of debt. Project Linq would be a reality instead of an on-again, off-again mirage. Besides, as one of Chuck’s readers writes, “This still seems like a huge expense just to pay homage to the black guy from the<\/em> Mod Squad.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever-vigilant in his watch over “The Borg” (aka Caesars Entertainment), Vegas Tripping author Chuck Monster has been keeping a gimlet eye on the revival of Project Linq. Granted access to internal Caesars documents, Mr. Monster reveals that the much-needed makeover … 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":[65,23,56,28,14,7,22,74,32,31,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7338"}],"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=7338"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24904,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7338\/revisions\/24904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}