Mr. Leven, your tinfoil hat is ready

Leven 2Given the chance to make some friends and influence people in Washington, D.C., instead Las Vegas Sands COO Michael Leven chose to spit in their eye. He made the rather wild claim that the present administration wants legalized Internet gambling “so the Internal Revenue Service can collect taxes to fund a federal government whose spending is out of control,” reported the Las Vegas Review Journal. While we fit Leven for a tinfoil hat, one might note that online play has been so paltry to date that taxes from it wouldn’t begin to cover the foreign aid we pay … oh, let’s say Israel. On the off chance that you care, Leven uttered various and sundry other political positions, which you can read here. As for Leven’s boss, Sheldon Adelson, he might want to look to the money-laundering beam in his eye rather than the mote in U.S.-licensed online casinos’.

Another GOP bigwig, Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) scored a victory last week. No, not re-election (not yet, anyway). The U.S. Department of the Interior gave him permission to punt the Dairyland Greyhound Park decision from late August to mid-February. Walker is hoping this takes the decision off the table during the campaign, although the Potowatomi and Ho-Chunk tribes may not fall for that strategy. Walker has articulated his core concern as cannibalization of existing businesses. In that respect, his probity exceeds that of fellow politicians in Iowa and Illinois, who just want more casinos and hang the consequences.

It’s probably fair to say that Station Casinos President Steve Cavallaro has been red_rockstudying developments on the Strip (*cough*MGM Resorts International*cough*) and decided it’s time to outgrow the “capture” business model of casino design. Although Red Rock Resort is a relatively new property and would be one of the best resorts on the Strip, if you could move it there, Cavallaro says its design is “old school.” Chief among the renovations is a quartet of restaurants that will front Red Rock’s Charleston Boulevard side. On the other side, Station will renovate parking areas, to maximize its proximity to the still-in-progress Shops at Summerlin. All this and several other refurbishments (including the spa) are budgeted at a bargain-priced $35 million. Redoing the standard guest list is on the to-do list, a few years out.

What Station did is something still fairly radical in the casino industry: It listened to its customers. Instead of marching them through the casino to get to Yard House, four years ago, the primary ingress was off the parking area. Bullseye. Same thing when Lucille’s Smokehouse opened three years later. “We started taking a hard look at that,” Cavallaro tells Howard Stutz.

Having gone overboard with expansion and been bitten — hard — by the market, Station is making the improvement of its existing properties its current priority. (Caesars Entertainment take note.) Palace Station, Boulder Station and even Green Valley Ranch Resort are all scheduled for upgrades. That’s the spirit.

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