Recent Media coverage

There was an article published in the Las Vegas Business Press by Arnold Knightly where I am quoted five times.
Downtown hopes for upturn is a quick review of the downtown casinos.

I may get whacked by Tilman Fertita's family. I'm actually sorry that I always sound so negative about the Golden Nugget since they did such a nice job with the renovation. I am simply pointing out that there seems to be no return on their money.

Well... arent you... 'bad for buisness'... it looks like you have problems that need to be... 'taken care of'.

Isn't ticking off an italian family that owns a casino like one of things you just dont do?? (just kidding)

Not to mention the Goodman family.

In defending the decision to build the new city hall and pay for it later, Oscar Goodman says The real estate market will rebound, he says, and if it doesn't, the city will have much bigger problems to worry about. "We're talking 5 years out," he says of the first interest installment. "If we can't make that payment, then we'll be speaking Mandarin and eating chow mein."

Talk about classic misdirection. The city is counting on a lot of construction downtown to pay enough taxes to pay for the city hall. I don't know what raising zenophobic fears about China does to counteract the fact that there is formidable competition from the strip. There was no downtown construction for 20 years, and when it began again the result is one spectacularly empty skyscraper called Streamline Tower

and Landry's restaurant flirting with bankruptcy .

The City of Las Vegas downtown faces serious competition as Harrah's is considering building an outdoor pedestrian area

and several proposals for an arena on the strip .

Is this the same Goodman that said he wanted to have graffiti artists thumbs cut off? - a sentiment I can surely understand to a degree.

I like the old Vegas style grit of downtown.

But I guess it doesn't sell -- or at least the attractions of the main strip wear out most good intentions to visit downtown while they're here.

Quote: rxwine

I like the old Vegas style grit of downtown.

But I guess it doesn't sell -- or at least the attractions of the main strip wear out most good intentions to visit downtown while they're here.

That's not it really. Downtown gaming dropped by a smaller percent than the Las Vegas strip. It's just that since 1992 downtown gaming has been slowly decreasing or at least flat. For almost two decades the casinos have remained profitable by cost cutting measures. When the market crashes like it did in the last two years there is very little to do except to massively cut services (close hotel towers, restaurants, snack bars, regular bars, and gaming options).

Something similar is happening to Circus Circus. The loss in revenue has turned the budget property into a money losing property.

Mandalay Bay also had a massive drop in revenue because of the loss of convention business. But the margin is much larger on a premium property. Without cost cutting it would have gone into the red, but the cost cutting has a more subtle effect on a premium resort. You won't find empty restaurants in Mandalay Bay.

No new information here, but the article was on Sunday's Las Vegas Review Journal with several quotes attributed to me.

Sunday review journal

The annual report was published for Golden Nugget after I talked to the reporters, and numbers came in at $216.800 million for CY2009. That was worse than $222.273 million reported by MGM MIRAGE when they formed the corporation in CY2000. So they are actually back ten years (I was quoted in the new article for five years).