Nothing’s easy at Revel; Death sentence for Harrah’s Tunica

“What am I going to do with this stuff with no electricity, no heat, no air conditioning? These people just give me so many roadblocks.” So complained Glenn Straub after New Jersey‘s Division of Gaming Enforcement ordered him to post guards on Revel‘s dormant slot machines. One understands his frustration, as reviving Revel constantly creates new sets of difficulties. The latest wrench in the works is that the gaming license has been deemed non-transferable, meaning Straub will have to apply for one of his own … although perhaps it was naive of him to expect otherwise. And if that were not enough, he has to sort out the fate of Stockton University‘s Island Campus (aka the Showboat), school President Herman Saatkamp having stepped out in disgrace after failing to anticipate that Trump Entertainment Resorts would dust off an ancient covenant with Caesars Entertainment to thwart non-gaming use of the property.

The bottom line is that a summer reopening of the casino behemoth appears very unlikely. Power was scheduled to be restored to the megaresort today but the difficulties of achieving a long-term solution to the energy problem could keep the megaresort shuttered for weeks to come. Acquiring Revel was supposed to be the easy part of Straub’s half-billion Project Phoenix for Atlantic City. However, from the way he’s been sounding, he’s frequently at the point of discouragement with matters both great and small.

* Caesars Entertainment has been given permission to start scrapping the casino portion of Harrah’s Tunica. This doesn’t sit well with the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board, which is owed $10.5 million by the Caesars, which is trying to void the lease as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. Caesars said it had been trying to sell the casino for three years, while the board says it needed to try harder, having “an inherent conflict of interest because dismantling the Harrah’s Tunica casino would benefit the debtors’ two other casinos by effectively eliminating the possibility of future casino competition on the Harrah’s Tunica property.”

In defense of Caesars, the marquee buyer was one Wayne Bryan, who claimed to be working with who he described as “a well-funded foreign national and submitted unverified documents from a non-U.S. bank purporting to hold in excess of one trillion dollars.” One can see why Caesars was inclined toward skepticism. As long as the dispute with the levee board drags on, the latter racks up $304,000 in monthly payments.

* Is it really five years already since the opening of Marina Bay Sands? Forbes‘ Muhammad Cohen pays the $5.7 billion megaresort a visit and finds no cause for complaint other than the guest rooms (“ordinary”), marveling at everything else on property. While competitor Resorts World Sentosa “has the overall aesthetic of a highway rest stop. MBS is one of the world’s architectural marvels,” Cohen writes. For this, the palm goes to architect Moshe Safdie, who designed something arrestingly different from every other casino megaresort in the world. Furthermore, local scholar Derek da Cunha says, “Las Vegas Sands and Marina Bay Sands played their cards better, had a better feel for local people.  All their recruitment drives were looking for local Singaporeans. [LVS chairman] Sheldon Adelson had a firm finger on the pulse of Singapore politics.” To which Adelson uttered a modest, “Oh, pshaw.” Well, no, probably not.