Sahara to close May 16
Another piece of old Vegas bites the dust.
Quote: 7outlineawayhttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-11/sahara-hotel-casino-oldest-on-las-vegas-strip-will-close-amid-downturn.html
Another piece of old Vegas bited the dust.
Very sorry to see this, though the place has seen better days.
Although it got progressively less cool every time I went back, I have more sentimental attachment there than anywhere else. It's where I learned to blay BJ and VP. :-(
I hope they tear it down, rather than let it turn into a vacant eyesore.
Too bad it couldn't be the Riviera to fold. Hooters or Gold Spike next.
Quote: Wizard
I hope they tear it down, rather than let it turn into a vacant eyesore.
Naw, that only happens in Reno.
Quote: zippyboyNaw, that only happens in Reno.
Touche!
Quote: WizardI hope they tear it down, rather than let it turn into a vacant eyesore.
I hope they don't. It's easier to revive a closed hotel than to build a new one. As it is, there are too many empty lots on the former north end of the Strip.
And so much for the Great Burrito event for WoVCon. Maybe we can work something out with McNuggets? :P
Edit: what does this mean to the monorail? Sahara was the North terminal. I assume the Deuce will still stop on/near the corner of Sahara and the Strip, but what about the ACE's stop at the back of the property?
I thought the Hilton was the last stop?!Quote: Nareedwhat does this mean to the monorail? Sahara was the North terminal. I assume the Deuce will still stop on/near the corner of Sahara and the Strip
Quote: zippyboyNaw, that only happens in Reno.
I will 3rd that!
First Golden Phoenix, then Fitz, then Silver Club, then Siena!
Nope. Sahara is the last stop - unless you count the maintenance garage which is a bit to the East of Sahara. The rail continues past the Sahara stop and bends around, so if a developer wanted to reposition the rail, it's going to be tricky / impossible since it still gets daily use.Quote: s2dbakerI thought the Hilton was the last stop?!Quote: NareedWhat does this mean to the monorail? Sahara was the North terminal. I assume the Deuce will still stop on/near the corner of Sahara and the Strip
However, there IS a switch in the rail near the Hilton between it and the Convention Center, so the Hilton can become the Northern terminus without having to go beyond to switch rails.
Did anyone have the Sahara ?
It included a bet between me and the Wiz. The players were the Riviera and Circus Circus.Quote: RaleighCrapsThere was an old thread on what casino would be the first to close.
Did anyone have the Sahara ?
Quote: NareedI thought the Hilton was the last stop?!
Quote: DJTeddyBearNope. Sahara is the last stop - unless you count the maintenance garage which is a bit to the East of Sahara. The rail continues past the Sahara stop and bends around, so if a developer wanted to reposition the rail, it's going to be tricky / impossible since it still gets daily use.
However, there IS a switch in the rail near the Hilton between it and the Convention Center, so the Hilton can become the Northern terminus without having to go beyond to switch rails.
Thanks DJT. A lesson to be learned for me and Nareed. Don't rely on our faulty memories. "We" should always google for a more reliable answer when in doubt :-)
Quote: ArtemisThanks DJT. A lesson to be learned for me and Nareed. Don't rely on our faulty memories.
What faulty memory? Sahara is the monorail's North terminal.
Speaking of maps, that map you linked seems to show a spur that goes to the Riveria (or nearby). No such spur exists.
On the other hand, I had to use Google Map's satelite view to verify that there's a switch just south of the Hilton stop.
So Wynncore will be the north end of the Strip for most people (yeah yeah, the Riv/CC/Strat but still...)?
Quote: mantic59Wow, sad: I wish Vegas wouldn't "reinvent" itself so often. My wife and I will be in Vegas the week of May 1 at Wynn/Encore so we'll have to walk up there for a last wander through the casino and a ride on the Cyber Raceway (if its still running).
So Wynncore will be the north end of the Strip for most people (yeah yeah, the Riv/CC/Strat but still...)?
See my list of the 41 Casinos in Nevada with Gaming Revenue Over $72 million in FY2010
Downloadable
Palace Station, Las Vegas Hilton are still over $72 million.
Riviera, Sahara, Stratosphere, Circus Circus LV, are all under $72 million although two of them dropped off the list only in the last two years. The loss of the Stardust and the New Frontier seems to have cut off the blood supply that can't be replaced by riding buses. I think with Sahara closing, there is no longer any heart to the district.
With the exception of Palace Station and Stratosphere all of these casinos are in a small place called Winchester Nevada (roughly 4 square miles and 27K citizens) which was established in 1953. It is bounded by Sahara, Desert Inn Rd, Interstate 15 and Boulder Highway.
The city of Las Vegas still has about 1/3 of the residents of Clark County, NV. It keeps pouring it's city tax dollars into downtown in a desperate attempt to keep that tax and employment center base alive. Winchester should become part of the City of Las Vegas, and they should concentrate on one district.
Quote: mantic59Wow, sad: I wish Vegas wouldn't "reinvent" itself so often. My wife and I will be in Vegas the week of May 1 at Wynn/Encore
Maybe if you and more people had chosen to stay at the Sahara, it wouldn't be closing soon :P
Quote:So Wynncore will be the north end of the Strip for most people (yeah yeah, the Riv/CC/Strat but still...)?
I think it already was. We ran a poll about it, too, last year.
The way I see it the Strip ends at the Wynn. The area occupied by the soon-to-be-late Sahara, Riviera and CC, is more like a half-dead ghost town. The Stratosphere, even then, stood more or less alone (too far to walk there from even the Sahara). Now it's really alone. It should bill itself as the gateway to Downtown, and run free shuttles from, say, Fashion Show to the Strat to Fremont St.
Of course it's not my money...
Quote: NareedIt should bill itself as the gateway to Downtown, and run free shuttles from, say, Fashion Show to the Strat to Fremont St.
Of course it's not my money...
The Deuce, the Ace (redubbed the Strip Downtown Express) and route #108 already run that route on 15 minute intervals. I think free shuttles would be overkill.
I don't know if they will simply cut out the Sahara stop to speed up traffic. They may simply make it optional.
The Nonprofit Las Vegas Monorail Company (LVMC) should be disbanded and sell it's assets to the government. That way you could purchase a single ticket to ride the buses or the monorail instead of having competing systems.
Quote: pacomartinThe Deuce, the Ace (redubbed the Strip Downtown Express) and route #108 already run that route on 15 minute intervals. I think free shuttles would be overkill.
As I said, not my money.
But plenty of people would take a shuttle to the Start if it weree fre, who would not take a bus to the Strat. Maybe. I know I stayed at the Rio last year because I got a good deal, but also because there was a free shuttle to/from the Strip. Absent the shuttle I'd have stayed at the Flamingo or Bally's.
(Hanging head in shame) You're absolutely right. When we started coming to Vegas ten years ago, Sahara was (to us) a cool, quirky place and we considered staying there a couple times. But we had a weakness for the Venetian and sort of made staying there a "tradition" (one that ends this year, *sigh*).
Quote: mantic59(Hanging head in shame)
Come now. When you see the " :P " smiley it means: "don't take the preceeding statement too seriously."
Quote:You're absolutely right. When we started coming to Vegas ten years ago, Sahara was (to us) a cool, quirky place and we considered staying there a couple times. But we had a weakness for the Venetian and sort of made staying there a "tradition" (one that ends this year, *sigh*).
Nothing wrong with that. In fact, your individual actions might not have made any real difference. But many of these places are clsoing because people don't go there any more; not in large enough numbers anyway.
I stayed at the Sahara in 08. It was ok, but badly located, even with the monorail, and so I've stayed elsewhere since. In subsequent trips I didn't stop at the Sahara even once, though I passed it numerous times on the bus.
Dollar Shot Glasses may be worth something now.
I guess they were losing too much money to keep it open and just want to wait for the neighborhood and economy to improve. It will be a long wait.
It's still a shame to hear about this, though...it was the first place I played craps on the Strip...I pulled their free slot machine when signing up for a players card and won a free drink and $10 slot play...so I had fun.
Quote: reilly12This is one of the oldest hotels left in Vegas, for the price you pay, you get just enough, If you are going to Vegas to walk on the strip and go know all the other casino and hotels. Always sad to see one of the older places close.
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Las Vegas Restaurant
This thread is about the closing of the Sahara not about Nikki Beach. You hawked Nikki Beach in all 6 of your posts under the name jim11 and this is your third link to Nikki Beach under reilly12. It's quite obvious especially with both posters using the same broken English.
The Wizard invited you to comment on Nikki Beach but you prefer to persist in this nonsense. I have a feeling you're going to see your name(s) in red very soon.
Quote: benbakdoffThe Wizard invited you to comment on Nikki Beach but you prefer to persist in this nonsense. I have a feeling you're going to see your name(s) in red very soon.
I just busted the offending post.
A word of advice, you're doing a disservice to Nikki's Beach by spamming this board about them. People are going to be LESS likely to go there if they can't pay for conventional advertising, and have to resort to stealing space on my site.
Quote: New Titans of Las Vegas Reinvent Old Formula Published: May 6, 2008 in NY Times“If you ask me what is the best toy for a 10-year-old, I cannot tell you, but if you ask a 10-year-old, he’ll tell you very well,” said Mr. Nazarian, the chief executive of the SBE Entertainment Group, which bought the Sahara, the former haunt of the Rat Pack, for a reported $400 million in March 2007. He plans to reinvigorate it by having Philippe Starck redesign it and by adding outposts of the California restaurant and nightclub brands he owns.
Lavish new projects near the Sahara will “price a lot of people out of the market by 2011 or 2012,” he said. “I want to offer an affordable hotel with rates between $150 and $250 that’s unbelievably chic and unbelievably creative.”
Nobody is getting $150-200 for a room now, except maybe the high-end places on a weekend.
Meanwhile, I'm paying $15-20 for a room at Terrible's :)
Quote: teddysMeanwhile, I'm paying $15-20 for a room at Terrible's :)
I looked at Herbst Gaming's SEC annual report for 2010. They have 3,869 in five hotels plus a mini hotel in Iowa. Average earning was $23.09 per room (which means they averaged slightly more than that if you count empty rooms). I think this includes the value of any rooms they gave away as comps (although I don't know if they bother to do that anymore).
Rooms are now less than 5% of the corporate revenue.
Here is a sample paragraph:
We are work-ing with our part-ners to assess a vari-ety of options for the prop-erty, includ-ing a com-plete ren-o-va-tion and repo-si-tion-ing,” said Sam Nazar-ian, CEO of sbe Enter-tain-ment Group, which owns and oper-ates the Sahara. “While no final deci-sions have been made at this point,” Nazar-ian said, “the con-tinued oper-a-tion of the aging Sahara was no longer eco-nom-i-cally viable.
Quote: SOOPOOThey have already fixed it, as there are no hyphens there now. But I guess they may not have a large proofreading budget......
that's funny, I see hyphens
Quote: odiousgambitthat's funny, I see hyphens
I have just reclicked on the link, and see no hyphens.... Yikes!!!
Quote: WizardIf you see the hyphens and copy and waste into Notepad, you'll still see them, but paste into Word and you won't. Bizarre.
It seems to be a feature of Microsoft. You can't see the hyphens with Microsoft WordPad either. They show up in Chrome, and in notepad, because that is a simple ASCII editor.
Quote: Microsoft instructions on Insert an optional hyphen
An optional hyphen is a hyphen that is used to control where a word or phrase breaks if it falls at the end of a line. For example, you can specify that the word "nonprinting" breaks as "non-printing" instead of "nonprint-ing." When you insert an optional hyphen in a word that is not at the end of a line, the hyphen will be visible only if you turn on Show/Hide. On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click Show/Hide.
Click in the word where you want to insert the optional hyphen.
Press CTRL+HYPHEN.
Quote: WizardIf you see the hyphens and copy and waste into Notepad, you'll still see them, but paste into Word and you won't. Bizarre.
(Emphasis added)
Freudian slip?
:)
Quote: pacomartinIf Circus Circus had a $5.366 million operating loss for 2010, of which $2.837 million was in the 4th quarter, it is hard to believe how that property is staying open. I wonder if the Sahara was doing worse or better.
Unbridled optimism, loss generator for tax write-offs, stupidity, spite, nostalgia, pride, stuborness....
It is hard to pick one reason.
I'm fairly confident the Sahara was doing better than that.
