{"id":989,"date":"2009-05-05T15:48:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T23:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2009\/5\/5\/Bleak-Horizon"},"modified":"2020-04-14T06:40:22","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T14:40:22","slug":"bleak-horizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/bleak-horizon\/","title":{"rendered":"Bleak Horizon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/userfiles\/Image\/805photo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" \/> Anybody who thought <strong>Columbia Sussex<\/strong> CEO <strong>William J. Yung III<\/strong> was exiting the casino industry, let alone going quietly, got a bracing dose of reality today. The older of <strong>Tropicana Entertainment<\/strong>&#8216;s two leases in <strong>Lake Tahoe<\/strong>, the <strong>Horizon<\/strong>, is in wind-down mode. It has <a href=\"http:\/\/investors.tropicanacasinos.com\/profiles\/investor\/ResLibraryView.asp?BzID=1508&amp;ResLibraryID=29921&amp;Category=1033\" class=\"broken_link\">two years to go on its lease<\/a> (although it could theoretically operate into 2014) but TropEnt CEO <strong>Scott Butera<\/strong> is wasting no time rolling up the sidewalks.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than be bothered with the continued management of the Horizon, Butera is fobbing it off on <strong>Lake Tahoe Realty I<\/strong>, a creature of Columbia Sussex. The transfer kicks off in true Yungian fashion with the elimination of 75 jobs. As bad or worse from the customer&#8217;s standpoint, the table games operation at the Horizon is being axed altogether and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tropicanacasinos.com\/casino_property.php?newtype=resort&amp;PropNum=805\" class=\"broken_link\">719-slot inventory<\/a> will be decimated by two-thirds or more. While all of this is straight from the Bill Yung playbook, there&#8217;s no indication so far that it&#8217;s anyone&#8217;s fault but that of Butera. As he prepares to consolidate Tahoe operations around <strong>MontBleu<\/strong> (the former <strong>Caesars Tahoe<\/strong>), he&#8217;d clearly like to see as little as competition from the Horizon as possible. Hence its demotion to grind-joint status.<\/p>\n<p>How this ledger-demain plays with landlord <strong>Park Cattle<\/strong> (<em>aka<\/em> <strong>Edgewood Cos<\/strong>.) will be interesting to see. Yung&#8217;s stewardship of the Horizon (which, according to recent litigation, could be characterized as malign neglect) was a source of great vexation to Park Cattle. One can only wonder how Edgewood execs feel about being back in business with Bill Yung. If the Horizon&#8217;s recent history &#8212; not to mention its savage downsizing to 200 gaming positions &#8212; is any guide, Park Cattle&#8217;s stated goal of converting it into a non-casino hotel is going to happen sooner rather than later, options notwithstanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anybody who thought Columbia Sussex CEO William J. Yung III was exiting the casino industry, let alone going quietly, got a bracing dose of reality today. The older of Tropicana Entertainment&#8216;s two leases in Lake Tahoe, the Horizon, is in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/bleak-horizon\/\">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":[15,76,25,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989"}],"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=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26744,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions\/26744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}