Stiffs and Georges

A spiffy makeover and a nostalgia-themed market position aren’t helping the Riviera as customers gravitate back toward higher-priced hotels. A bad neighborhood, while hardly a new phenomenon, isn’t helping. Having Echelon and Fontainebleau as your neighbors is akin to living next to a cemetery and a slum, respectively. “We anticipate that our walk-in traffic will [...]

Even if you’re making money on a daily basis, sometimes a casino-resort can be a bad investment. Take Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, which finally posted a profitable quarter. However, at $3.9 billion in construction costs (now at or very near the $4 billion mark with expansions and revisions of the property), it’s doubtful that Deutsche [...]

Eight years later, Steve Wynn is still firmly ensconced at the top. Gary Loveman is hanging on for dear life and George Maloof is a sad-faced figurehead. And $2.7 billion for a casino resort (Wynn Las Vegas) looks like frugality after the sums blown on CityCenter, Fontainebleau, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and — oh [...]

S&G contributor JeffInOKC returns from a too-long absence with some thoughts on one of our favorite topics, the North Strip …

It is common for us to hear the term “Too Big to Fail,” but I think the true story of Fountainebleau is “Too Big to Succeed.” The original plan for the property [...]

A reader in Arizona asks the question that was on my mind yesterday and probably yours, too: “Is it just me … or does this look like just a copper/gold-colored version of CityCenter?”
Agreed! (With a large helping of Mandalay Bay slopped around the front and sides. Look, if you want originality, you don’t phone up [...]

If you’ll pardon my vulgarity, shit got real while I was tied up with other projects. Last week’s sale of excess baggage Dania Jai-Alai in Florida was just a tiny prelude to this morning’s blockbuster: Echelon is kaput. Instead, Boyd Gaming will liquidate it to Genting Berhad for $350 million. This closes the book on Boyd’s [...]

For those of us who missed it this year, the best Christmas tradition of which I know.
First and most importantly …
To you, the reader, who makes this possible, a year of happiness, health and wealth, whether material, intellectual or spiritual.
Atlantic City: Good luck in a year that will end with ‘13.’
Boyd Gaming: New TV commercials.
Caesars [...]

One weekend down, nine to go. Bear that in mind if you simply must see Faith Hill and Tim McGraw play The Venetian. The clock’s a tickin’. Since my knowledge of the McGraw-Hill oeuvre (separately and together) consists of the intro to Sunday Night Football, I will defer to Mike Weatherford’s review which strikes me [...]

For months, state Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie), has been threatening to push an enormous gambling expansion through the Illinois Legislature during its lame-duck session. He says he’s “getting very close” but we’ve heard that kind of braying from Lang previously. A sock puppet of Illinois‘ horsey set, Lang won’t be satisfied with any bill that [...]

As Yahoo’s Jeff Macke cuttingly puts it, he “found a real, live businessman who creates jobs,” thereby providing a Steve Wynn-to-sanity translation, courtesy of CIO Advisors‘ Hugh Johnson. If Wynn were truly being honest, he’d cut to the quick: He’s scared witless that his high-income customers who play at Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, and [...]

Update: Today, Wynn got into the act in the ongoing Big Bird charade. As Steve Sebelius points out, it’s meaningless posturing, nothing more.
Life’s been good to Steve Wynn. How good? Well, if you or I talked like a crazy conspiracy theorist broadcasting via ham radio from our Pahrump bomb shelter, people would avoid us in [...]

Today is being spent at home, buried ‘neath page proofs for Eating Las Vegas 3.0 (with assistance from sibling kitties Leona and Rascal, the latter incredibly well-named). Tonight brings Tournament of Kings — which I’ve never seen — and Evil Dead The Musical, which I have, but not in its V Theater incarnation. Last night [...]

It was inevitable that this Lake Tahoe marine disaster would go viral. Besides, as an S&G reader astutely pointed out, the sinking of the Sierra Rose makes a tidy metaphor for Nevada’s economy: a top-heavy S.S. McMansion now half-underwater due to a lack of structural integrity. Think of it as Fontainebleau in ship form.

Considering that [...]

So the big, official, grand, this-time-we-really-mean-it opening of Revel Resort & Casino came and went … and all the media has been talking about is Beyoncé and how bootylicious she looks so soon after giving birth. (Seven-plus pages of YouTube videos, too, and scarcely a clip of anything else on the Revel premises.) The good [...]

What took them so long? That has to be the operative question now that Trump Entertainment Resorts owner Marc Lasry and CEO Robert Griffin have belatedly put Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino on the market, at an undisclosed price. (Probably the $35 million that Griffin needs to re-do Trump Taj Mahal.) The timing of the [...]

To celebrate the first anniversary of his cold-blooded, premeditated murder of the Sahara, nightclub owner Sam Nazarian trotted out freshly hired casino boss Rob Oseland, along with some models (no, not of the runway ilk) and even a rendering that one can find on the SLS Las Vegas Web site. As Chuck Monster reports, NASCAR [...]

In the unlikely event that Steve Wynn is abducted by aliens and thrown into a Chinese political prison, Wynn Resorts need look no farther than ex-wife Elaine Wynn for continuity of vision. (And, make no mistake, there isn’t a discernible point where El Steve leaves off and “Wynn Resorts” begins. L’etat c’est lui.) If it [...]

Although I was only joking when I suggested that Steve Wynn’s long-sought Cotai Strip land grant would come in on May Day, some Communist Party bureaucrat wasn’t. After many false alarms, the 51 acres were finally ‘gazetted’ on May 1. In lieu of Wynn brandishing a hammer and sickle, per S&G’s suggestion, it would suffice [...]

Good news for Trump Plaza: It’s off the “death watch,” having dramatically reversed its fortunes last year. Although revenues continue to decline, gross operating profit swung from a $2 million loss in 2010 to a nearly $3 million gain last year. This is terrific news for Trump Entertainment Resorts, which has been effectively subsidizing the [...]

This is the conclusion of a two-part interview with Riviera boss Andy Choy in which he answers questions submitted by S&G readers.

Can the Riv survive if nothing is done with the Sahara, Fontainebleau or Echelon sites for another five years? How long can a seasoned but old competitor survive in No Man’s Land? The north [...]