{"id":8972,"date":"2012-05-08T12:53:48","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T20:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=8972"},"modified":"2012-05-08T13:04:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T21:04:41","slug":"it-was-20-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/it-was-20-years-ago-today\/","title":{"rendered":"“It was 20 years ago today …”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWell, not quite<\/a>. But with the Southern Gaming Summit<\/strong> convening today in Biloxi<\/strong>, it’s as good a moment as any to look back on the quaint beginnings of what’s now a kind of American Riviera<\/strong>. Eleven casinos, 5,598 hotel rooms, 11,335 employees and $323 million in tax payments later, it’s pretty remarkable to think that it all grew out of two dinky, little riverboats — Bernie Goldstein<\/strong>‘s Diamond Lady<\/em> and Emerald Lady<\/em> — in the space of two decades and despite Hurricane Katrina<\/strong>, which obliterated or disabled every casino in town except Imperial Palace<\/strong> (now owned by Boyd Gaming<\/strong>) and dealt the industry a multi-year setback. Well played, Biloxi.<\/p>\n

Congratulations<\/strong> to industry veteran Anthony Rodio<\/strong>, who ascends to the direction<\/a> of Carl Icahn<\/strong>‘s entire Tropicana Entertainment<\/strong> casino portfolio (i.e., the remnants of Columbia Sussex<\/strong>), replacing caretaker CEO Daniel Ninivaggi<\/strong>. Given Rodio’s expanded workload, the task of butting heads with Unite-Here<\/strong> at the Tropicana Atlantic City<\/strong> will apparently soon devolve to someone else, an unlucky soul as yet unnamed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, not quite. But with the Southern Gaming Summit convening today in Biloxi, it’s as good a moment as any to look back on the quaint beginnings of what’s now a kind of American Riviera. Eleven casinos, 5,598 hotel rooms, … 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":[23,60,82,15,28,140,85,53,35,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972"}],"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=8972"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8974,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8972\/revisions\/8974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}