{"id":8676,"date":"2012-03-20T12:22:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T20:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=8676"},"modified":"2012-03-20T12:22:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T20:22:27","slug":"moodys-no-longer-moody-on-vegas-golden-gate-upsizes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/moodys-no-longer-moody-on-vegas-golden-gate-upsizes\/","title":{"rendered":"Moody’s no longer moody on Vegas; Golden Gate upsizes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Caution, thy name is Moody’s Investors Service<\/strong>. So if Moody’s is bullish on the near-term future<\/a> of Las Vegas<\/strong>, I guess we can well and truly believe that a recovery is here … well, on the Strip. Away from Las Vegas Boulevard<\/strong>, you still might mistake us for postwar Baghdad<\/strong>. In fact, the local NBC-TV<\/strong> affiliate has initiated a series of news segments, prompted by our foreclosure pandemic, entitled The Eyesore Next Door<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Anyway, not only is visitation up 4%, hotel occupancy has increased for the first time in the last four years (i.e., pre-Palazzo<\/strong>). In a reversal of the old Wall Street<\/strong> saw that fortunes would improve with “the next wave of megaresort openings,” now it is the dearth<\/em> of incoming room product that is seen as the Strip’s salvation, allowing it to absorb the combined supply shock of Palazzo, Encore<\/strong>, CityCenter<\/strong> and The Cosmopolitan<\/strong>. Retiring the Sahara<\/strong> didn’t hurt, either. Room rates have notched almost two full years of sustained improvement — for operators, that is. (Customers might have a different opinion.) Fuel-price increases are the only storm cloud Moody’s perceives on an otherwise serene horizon.<\/p>\n

You know times are improving<\/strong> when the sort of batshit-crazy concepts that were routinely floated in the 1990s and earlier in this century — remember Bob Stupak<\/strong>‘s Titanic<\/em>-shaped casino? — are once again proposed with totally straight faces. Case in point: Speedway Motorsports<\/strong> wants to create a domestic version of the 16-mile Nurburgring<\/strong> race course in or just outside North Las Vegas<\/strong>. Speedway wants to superimpose the following configuration …<\/p>\n

\"\"… on the topography of the Vegas Valley<\/strong>, with some incursion into Bureau of Land Management<\/strong> acreage implied. Now, I don’t have a pair of calipers handy but if you drew a 10-mile radius around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway<\/strong> (a circle within with Speedway Motorsports 8,000 acres lie), you’d find your options to be damned few: Mountains to the east, tribal land to the northeast, Nellis AFB<\/strong> to the south, then residential development, etc. There’s some empty BLM acreage just to the northwest. Actually, north of the 215 Beltway<\/strong>, you’ve got Aliante Station<\/strong> and precious little else … except at lot of raw land whose owners (including Gary Goett<\/strong> and Station Casinos<\/strong>) would gladly unload. So, wacky as it sounds, this Nurburgring-in-Vegas concept could be the salvation of landowners who were left high and dry by the recession.<\/p>\n

\"\"Fresh from unveiling<\/strong> new plans and a new name for musty, old Fitzgeralds<\/strong>, owner Derek Stevens<\/strong> is formally announcing the expansion of the historic Golden Gate<\/strong>. In what would be a prodigious display of speed, Stevens is promising “a spectacular 35,000-square-foot, five-story luxury tower with 16 hotel suites, including two penthouses that will encompass the entire [fifth] floor<\/em>,” an extended casino and a new porte cochere\u00a0 … all by midsummer!<\/p>\n

In addition to high-limit wagering and bikini-clad flair bartenders, Stevens is taking a page or two<\/a> from the Dennis Gomes<\/strong> playbook (think “flapper”). Hey, if it worked in Atlantic City<\/strong>, why not Vegas? And let’s hope it’s a step up from the overhyped “fetish dealers” at the Vegas Club<\/strong>, who wouldn’t shock a kindergarten class. The small, original — but characterful — rooms in the older part of the hotel will be brought into step with the times, in the form of Keurig<\/strong> coffee makers, iPod<\/strong> stations, flat-screen TVs and improved mattresses. Oh, and don’t forget 3:2 blackjack, the ace up Stevens’ sleeve. Give him credit: he’s a man of deeds, not words — which was more than could be said for the late Don Barden<\/strong> or for Tamares Group<\/strong>‘s seven years of mostly empty promises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caution, thy name is Moody’s Investors Service. So if Moody’s is bullish on the near-term future of Las Vegas, I guess we can well and truly believe that a recovery is here … well, on the Strip. Away from Las … 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":[23,56,28,142,155,83,51,14,4,41,53,78,54,12,57,32,47,9,19,20,38],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676"}],"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=8676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8679,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8676\/revisions\/8679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}