Sh*t You May Have Missed… Like The D Catching on Fire

Hey all, BigAZMarty here with this week’s news about our favorite place, Las Vegas!

1) Caesars Entertainment found what it was looking for with its $2B in cash, and WTF, racinos in Indiana?  Yup, they are purchasing Centaur Holdings for $1.7B in CASH.  Centaur owns Hoosier Park and Indiana Grand and the pari-mutuel parlors associated with it.  Still can’t see anyone in Indiana betting that big to recoup that investment as Indiana is not a major population center but a rust belt state (small cities have that downtown Back to the Future feel).  Read LVRJ here.  The kicker is that in 2021 Caesars can add in Table Games to the casino floor and that will lower the multiple from 8.3 to less than 7 with the addition of the Total Rewards program.  Personally I’d never heard of these properties but they have some interesting history, read via Wikipedia here for Hoosier Park and here for Indiana Grand.  Both properties are to the east of Indianapolis.  I really am not getting this as say Pinnacle Entertainment has a market cap of under $2B and has a lot more casinos than this in places where Caesars would not have to divest for direct competing market and as the Ameristar brand is a more luxury brand.

2) Green Valley Ranch workers voted to Unionize back on Nov. 10th read LVRJ here.  However the owner (Subsidiary of Stations Casino) is contesting the vote to the NLRB read LVRJ here.  I find it interesting that that is occurring across several of the Red Rock Resorts properties in the Stations chain.  Could it be the Union’s smell the Fertitta’s (UFC) sale money?

3) Winner, winner, chicken dinner!  A man at Boyd’s Cannery hit the $820K Jackpot on a $3 spin at Buffalo Grand.  Nice to see someone win at that game, read LVRJ here… and congratulations!

4) Interesting that after we mention the lack of news on Las Vegas Sands investment in Las Vegas (namely with the music arena), that suddenly it’s in the news in their paper?  Read more on the soon to be under construction (June 2018 start and 2020 completion date) arena for music via LVRJ here.  Of course no votes have been put up by the county yet so that date could slide if changes are required.  From what I’ve read this will be designed as a music arena so it will not need to have the changeability of a sports arena that also does music events.  Seats can be wider and legroom bigger row over row and sound deadening panels can be installed to prevent arena reverb.  2020 is going to be a very busy “opening” season for Las Vegas.

5) In possible bad news for MGM Resorts, the Nevada State Supreme Court has excluded some of the lawsuit rules in cases where things have happened before yet security was not increased.  Read LVRJ here.  Remember that NewYork-NewYork Resort had an Active Shooter event in 2007, read here from 2News. That might be enough of a legal precedent for the ASSHAT event to get MGM in trouble.

6) The Venue in downtown Las Vegas is up for sale at an asking price of $18.9M.  Read LVRJ here.  They are also selling the one in Scottsdale, AZ. for $12.9M as well.  Sounds like a marketing issue if the building wasn’t visibly used.

7) Mandarin Oriental installs Pepper the robot on the Sky Lobby floor, read LVSun here. For some reason I read this article and the Dr. Pepper jingle started up in my head… just saying.  Snapple/Dr. Pepper should pay to have it sing the jingle while not doing anything.  Are you a Pepper? Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too?  This will torment me for a few days, no doubt.

8) LasVegas Weekly has some insight into a surprise hit at Primrose at Monte Carlo (soon to be ParkMGM), read here.  Fried appetizers, who knew?

9) MarC of EDGE Vegas has a ranking of the rooms in the Caesars portfolio in Las Vegas here.  If going by end of the hall Burgundy rooms Paris would move to #4, and MarC’s issue with the Flamingo casino is dead on, my skin crawls when I go in here for some reason, if they can raise the ceiling a little that would subside as they have done with Bally’s inside casino roof.  The days of low height and bad air handling should be over by now. For those strip and downtown casinos attracting non-smoking people, the higher the roof inside the easier it is to mask the smell of the smoke from the non-smoking customers.

10) MarC also has a concise list of which NBA teams you will NOT be able to bet on by property, via PlayNevada here.

11) EATER Vegas has some “newness” coming to Neonopolis downtown here.  No announced dates but if this all comes to fruition, that will have a lot more people down on that end of Fremont Street.  Watch for those empty lots to start to be cheap event parking lots soon.

12) EATER also has Donut Mania invading Aliante here, Mmmmm donuts.  As long as it’s not Fractured Prune (the upside down pineapple cake treatment for donuts, where every donut is just a little wet… Ewwww!).

13) Missing some Barry Manilow in Las Vegas? Vital Vegas has the rumor that Barry will be back at the Westgate starting in April, 2018, read here.

14) After the recent Palms announcements and last week’s list of stuff from MarC of EDGE Vegas, Scott of Vital Vegas has a listicle article on 22 things new or changing at The Palms, read here.  Scroll down for some dessert porn at Lucky Penny Cafe at The Palms.  That one picture could be flipped upside down and look a lot like the lights in the main room of the South Point cafe.

15) If you want to see Kendra Wilkinson and Jai Rodriguez in their starring roles at Paris’ run of “Sex Tips For Straight Women from a Gay Man” better hurry up as Kats of LVRJ is reporting here that Jan 2 as their last date to portray the characters in the show, producers are looking at another female reality star and a male with stage experience to fill the roles after Jan. 2.

16) McCarren is reporting another Y-O-Y increase in passenger counts, this time a new monthly record as October 2017 is in at 4.33 Million airline passengers.  Read LVRJ here at the bottom where it lists which airlines were up and which were down.  Korean Air and Mexico’s InterJet seem to be leaders in adding international passengers, while Spirit, Frontier, JetBlue and Sun Country led the way domestically by increasing their domestic passenger counts.  Depending on holiday visitation there may be a yearly record broken as well.

17) The D had a small electrical vault fire in their mechanical room on the 2nd floor; no guest affected read news3lv.com here.  A security guard had some smoke inhalation issues but was treated.

18) In a fait accompli, Las Vegas has cornered the market on NBA Summer League as all 30 teams will play in Las Vegas next summer, the Orlando league will no longer happen.  Read LVSun here.  And who says Las Vegas isn’t an NBA town?

19) At El Cortez, Pizza Lotto is going to close and Naked City Pizza will take its place, read Vital Vegas here.  Downtown has some serious pizza competition going on!

20) Red Rock Resorts is removing a Clique Food Venue, Salute Italian is heading out and rumored incoming is LDV Hospitality (which runs Cosmo’s Scarpetta).  Read Vital Vegas here.

21) Aria is changing management of the Todd English P.U.B., soon to be minus Todd English per here at Vital Vegas; rumor is the management of BierHaus in The Park will take over management of the shorter P.U.B. bar.

22) Want to take the kids somewhere besides Ethel M’s Holiday Light display? Well LVSun has a gallery of the now open Las Vegas Speedway display here.

23) Back to the court, Moulin Rouge site will not be purchased by Clark County per LVRJ here.  The court judge that awarded the bid to Clark County will have to decide who will be purchasing the site now, so plans are all back to square one.  If no one comes forward with financing and an approved plan by the local residents of the area it will be a hard slog forward.  Historic or not if all the buildings have been razed it’s just a dirt lot with history… the story of Las Vegas right?

That’s it for the news around town this week… and now over to our Editor-in-Chief, LasVegasJunkie, for our stuff and more.

Gracias, BigAZMarty! It was a short week this week with Thanksgiving so only a couple of articles:

Blonde4ever details all the luxuries of the Plaza Hotel and Casino and the many highlights of her annual fall trip. 

Vegas Bright massage pundit Iun Hockley warns us to stay away from Serenity Spa by Westgate. 

That’s all Folks!

[Photo Cred. LasVegasJunkie]

BigAzMarty

A computer professional who has worked at several types of positions with several different businesses and still learning and changing.
Introduced properly to Las Vegas and Laughlin by the spouse and have been going ever since 1990.
A frequent visitor from not to far away where it’s almost always 10 degrees warmer than Vegas.