Resolution at Revel; MGM turns up the heat on Connecticut

Our long Revel nightmare is at least partially over, now that Glenn Straub has a deal in place to buy the disputed ACR Energy Revel_lobbypatio_PANOPartners power plant. While ACR pays $15 million to placate bondholders, Straub gets the plant for $30 million, theoretically putting to an end a number of pressing issues of how he was going to keep Revel heated and alight through the winter. It also ends worries that Bank of New York Mellon was going to foreclose on the plant … although there always seems to be another shoe about to drop where Revel is concerned. Let’s see if Straub can now move on to honing a new vision for the property without any additional footwear hitting the floor.

* Here’s a bad idea that didn’t make it through the Nevada Lege in 2015 but just give it a couple of years: “The Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck law firm has proposed a new regulation that would create licensing framework for private investment companies that would help boost interest from private equity funds and financial institutions, but would eliminate the publicly traded entity requirement that promotes financial reporting transparency,” reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Great. Hasn’t private equity done enough harm to the gaming industry? And now Frank Schreck wants to give it more ownership with less public openness. We seem to be laying the groundwork for a repetition of 2008’s crash-and burn.

* “It’s a full-court press from MGM. It’s become almost an obsession with MGM,” complains a Connecticut businessman involved with Holderthe Mohegan Sun/Foxwoods Resort Casino project for a third casino in the greater Hartford area. MGM Resorts International indeed has wheeled out the heavy artillery, led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The company’s main point of contention was that the casino, intended to interdict business otherwise headed to MGM Springfield, was exclusively bid to the two tribes.

“All of sudden, up pops this bill. It was astonishing and outrageous that only these tribes would be allowed by the state to operate a new casino,” rejoins MGM lobbyist Alan Feldman. With as much as a third of MGM Springfield‘s revenue base at stake, the company is taking no prisoners.

* Here’s proof of the importance of regional gaming. Despite having three casinos and 4,100 hotel rooms now in Reno, growing El Dorado Resorts (owned by the same Carano family that gave us Gina Garano) is only counting on Reno for 25% of its future revenues, compared to 32% from one property in Ohio, racino Scioto Downs.

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