{"id":917,"date":"2008-04-11T16:23:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-12T00:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/4\/11\/Columbia-Sussex-evicted-sorta"},"modified":"2020-06-02T07:30:46","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T15:30:46","slug":"columbia-sussex-evicted-sorta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/columbia-sussex-evicted-sorta\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbia Sussex evicted (sorta)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In what has been described as an &#8220;abrupt&#8221; end to the <b>Columbia Sussex\/Park Cattle Co. lawsuit<\/b>, playing out up in Douglas County, Nev., the former has paid out $40 million of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/cincinnati\/stories\/2008\/04\/07\/daily36.html\" class=\"broken_link\">an eventual $165 million<\/a> and given Park Cattle the option to terminate Columbia Sussex&#8217;s <b>Lake Tahoe Horizon Casino<\/b>\u00a0lease in 2011 &#8212; 29 years ahead of schedule. This is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ktnv.com\/Global\/story.asp?S=8150628\" class=\"broken_link\">a staggering defeat<\/a> for &#8216;ColSux,&#8217; which had initiated the litigation and will be hard-pressed to spin this as anything but a debacle. Park Cattle also won the right to turf its Kentucky-based adversary out of the nearby <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.montbleuresort.com\" class=\"broken_link\">MontBleu Casino Resort &amp; Spa<\/a><\/b> (formerly Caesars Tahoe) in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Given the &#8220;contumacious&#8221; nature ascribed to stubborn CEO <b>William J. Yung III<\/b>, he must have been advised that his case was going down in flames. It&#8217;s not in his nature to fold his hand so meekly. Without revealing anything specific, I can say that for Park Cattle to allow Yung to hold onto the Horizon beyond 2011 would require his company to turn over a new leaf of continental proportions, especially after Park Cattle&#8217;s court filings accused &#8216;ColSux&#8217; of basically wrecking the place &#8212; both physically and financially.<\/p>\n<p>Things would be a lot worse for Yung had the case gone to the jury and he&#8217;d lost, if one Park Cattle contention is correct. The landlord claims that <b>$1.73 billion<\/b> in debt related to Columbia Sussex&#8217;s Aztar Corp. buyout was attached to <b>Wimar Tahoe<\/b>, the holding company to which Park Cattle leases the Horizon. Given that Horizon-related litigation was ongoing at the time, this allegation (if accurate) suggests remarkable imprudence on Yung&#8217;s part. Had the Douglas County jurors told him, &#8220;Get out ASAP,&#8221; Yung would have really have had some &#8216;splainin&#8217; to do to his debtholders, with whom his relations are already strained.<\/p>\n<p><b>At least cooler heads prevailed<\/b> in the strange saga of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/referenceguide-locationdetail.cfm?LocationID=685\">Westin Casuarina<\/a> and its &#8230; um &#8230; creative way of collecting a <b>$57,000 convention bill<\/b> (i.e., soak the attendees). After the wrath of Hell broke about its heads, &#8216;ColSux&#8217; realized that maybe tiptoeing into your customers&#8217; wallets &#8212; without telling them first, which would have required spending money on stationery and postage &#8212; wasn&#8217;t such a great idea and belatedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lvrj.com\/business\/17455939.html\">did the right thing<\/a> by remitting the fifty grand or so it had run up on unsuspecting customers&#8217; credit cards.<\/p>\n<p>Give Columbia Sussex credit (if you&#8217;ll pardon the term) for realizing that its position was indefensible &#8212; ethically, at least and perhaps legally, too. You know what would have been even smarter? <i>Not doing it in the first place!<\/i> It&#8217;s a sad day when you have to congratulate someone for showing common human decency.<\/p>\n<p><b>Turnaround at Trop?<\/b> True, the<b> Atlantic City Tropicana<\/b> is coming off a horrible March, but merchants at its Quarter retail annex <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pressofatlanticcity.com\/180\/story\/128838.html\" class=\"broken_link\">see signs of improvement<\/a>. One tenant reports a year-over-year improvement of 40% while another sees the Trop loosening up on the comps. Now they just need to get people to gamble there, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In what has been described as an &#8220;abrupt&#8221; end to the Columbia Sussex\/Park Cattle Co. lawsuit, playing out up in Douglas County, Nev., the former has paid out $40 million of an eventual $165 million and given Park Cattle the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/columbia-sussex-evicted-sorta\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,15,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917"}],"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=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27215,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions\/27215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}