Sh*t You May Have Missed… Like Tropicana Pedestrian Bridges to reopen
Hey all, BigAZMarty here with this week’s news about our favorite place, Las Vegas!
1) In a 3 way deal, Penn National is purchasing Pinnacle Entertainment for $2.8B in Cash and Stock, the other party which is new to the dealings is Boyd Gaming Corp who will purchase 2 Ameristar resorts (Kansas City, MO, St. Charles, MO) and the Belterra properties in Indiana and Ohio for $575M. Read LVSun here. This makes Penn National #3 in Casino Revenues behind MGM and Caesars (Wynn and LV Sands get most of their revenue overseas… you know Macau). While Pinnacle is based in Las Vegas it has no resorts in town, but this will expand the regional Las Vegas feeder system for Penn, with both Tropicana and M Resort under their belt as rewards for lots of regional play. Remember that Penn spun off a lot of the real estate to Gaming and Leisure REIT so in a lot of cases the REIT also owns Pinnacle properties already… they just change the company leasing it from them to Penn.
2) Confirmed is the Vital Vegas story of Wynn Resorts buying the Alon land, it’s a purchase price of $336M, the sale includes the 18.4 acres Crown-owned, it will continue to pay the lease to the Elardi family for 16.2 acres on the site, also purchased is a small parcel attached that Phil Ruffin owned (MGM Marketing offices maybe?). Read and view more at LVRJ here including a map of what is coming on North Strip.
3) Just a tad late to make cut off last week, we can’t call it Fontainebleau anymore, it’s now Project Blue and the new owners have already hired Penta Building Group to finish up the construction, read LVRJ here. And fun that Jackie Robinson of All Net Resorts and Arena thinks they will start construction at Project Blue in 2018.
4) 3883 Flamingo project is back on again, but with a much smaller tower than before, the 9 acres to the east of The Palms will have Retail, Food, Condos and a Hotel according to CAI Investments, according to the LVSun here. Interesting that they are going to put a Del Taco in that area (used to be a Texaco gas station on that land with a Del Taco inside… was perfect for filling up both car and breakfast burrito’s for drive back to wherever you drove in from). The Hotel/Condo tower will only be 17 stories now and will be on the Southeast portion of the property which should reduce The Palms from having blocked sightlines.
5) Management at Hard Rock Casino Hotel in Las Vegas have settled a labor dispute with the Culinary Union, read LVSun here. Details are vague as it still needs final signatures.
6) Oh now, this just can’t be good in real life unless it has a system for non-distracting alerts, but smart bikes that will alert riders to safety issues will be tested in Downtown Las Vegas read LVSun here. For some reason, I think of this if it is a distracting alert to the rider here.
7) Finally (and Penn saying finally!) the escalators at LV Blvd and Tropicana have been completed per LVSun here. The elevators will take until spring to complete. Tropicana should no longer have any foot traffic issues and Penn can finally figure out the walk-in traffic for the Tropicana. Hard to believe that it’s the first redo after 23 years and it was doing 130,000 people a day.
8) So Sex Tips for a Straight Women from a Gay Guy at Paris has its new cast, Sheana Shay, and Chester Lockhart. I had no idea who they are but LVWeekly at LVSun does and has some history and a photo of the new cast in character here.
9) Mark your calendars ‘Lil Monsters as Lady Gaga finally has signed for her first residency in Las Vegas, Park Theater will be the location and start in Dec 2018, Vital Vegas broke it early and the show details are in here at LVSun as well. Probably didn’t hurt she had just finished performing at T-Mobile Arena right next door as part of her normal tour package either. Here is the story from Vital Vegas with the details here that beat everyone out. Read his updates at the bottom… 74 shows for $100M.
10) Vital Vegas here has more deconstruction porn as Diablo’s is coming down at Monte Carlo, nice holes… but what happened to the she-devil on the roof? Did Scott find a new man cave ornament?
11) While looking through room types at Bally’s, there are the newly remodeled rooms starting to show up at Bally’s in the Indigo Tower, here seem to be the room types and new names that seem to be starting to come online in Jan/Feb 2018. The new Resort Studio Suite is affordable Sun-Thursday in off weeks in Jan/Feb and then get super steep in price… this I believe will be the re-mod of the old Indigo Tower Suite room I reviewed last year here. No photo’s yet and with them taking room reservations already sight unseen, not sure I want to take that risk. This is a departure for Caesars properties as usually the room re-mod is at least leaked on their blog first before they take reservations. Also of note, no mention of a room fridge.
12) Speaking of Caesars Blog, they have a fun write up on 10 secrets on Paris Resort here. #11 If you need just a slightly bigger room than the regular Burgundy Room, do an End of the Hall Burgundy Room… just a tad more space and a different layout than the normal rooms plus 2 windows since you are the end of the hall.
13) LVRJ has some more, here, on A.Y.C.E. Buffet opening at The Palms by the time you read this. What is very new besides the nice food photo’s is the fact this is NOT part of the Feast Buffet’s that are at the other Station Casinos. That and the fact they are actively reducing serving sizes to reduce food waste so small servings of nice food are okay since you can always go back for more if it rocks your boat. Buffets = Food Coma anyways right?
14) Henderson’s Skyline Casino is adding even more rooms and a pool, read LVRJ here. The 60% occupancy at the newly built hotel at 51 rooms has them adding in an additional 41 rooms and a pool to accommodate family coming in to visit family members at the nearby Henderson Hospital and the Union Village coming soon.
15) Fresh off the purchase of the properties from Penn and Pinnacle, Boyd Gaming is purchasing Valley Forge Resort Casino in King of Prussia in Pennsylvania for $281M. Boyd still needs that strip hotel to make up the loss of the Barbary Coast and Stardust strip properties. Read LVRJ here.
16) Whew, Clark County finally decides to not “double stack” several feeder streets as “expressways” to the airport to the strip, read LVRJ here. I still think the monorail is a great fix to this. Airport down Paradise, then tie into the SLS station or Airport over to the new Mandalay Bay Shoppes station either one works.
17) Army Corp of Engineers has signed off on a culvert move that would have prevented the Raiders new stadium, read LVRJ here. This should mean more equipment showing up soon on the site as this clears a major hurdle to starting construction.
18) Getting to the end of the year lists LVRJ has the 10 biggest real estate deals of the year, here. Of note and glaring omission, Golden Entertainment purchasing Stratosphere and Arizona Charlies plus Colorado River/Laughlin Aquarius.
19) So how’d this happen and no one knew? In Paris, the HeXX candy store closed and is being reworked into the Alexxa’s Bar… a sangria bar on the southwest corner of Paris under the Beer Garden. Read LVRJ here. The missus won’t be happy when she hears this, the Grape Crush Float was a favorite of hers at HeXX Candy. The bar will still have some chocolate from HeXX in the mix however but not in a candy store/ice cream store format. The HeXX restaurant is not affected by this at all and remains open.
20) MarC of EDGe Vegas via travelzork.com has more updates on the Park MGM work and how it’s all starting to “come together nicely” read here. MarC you love Primrose’s bar because it looks like a brighter clone of the Cheers set bar, just need Norm to the right with a big beer mug.
21) Also, a fun read is Motley Fools more financial story why the MGM project to convert Monte Carlo/Hotel32 to Park MGM/NoMad will make sense financially here.
22) EATER Vegas is rounding out the year with a trio of articles on where to eat in Las Vegas by winter holiday. Hanukkah here (I know it’s late so maybe next year?). Christmas here. New Years Eve here.
23) EATER Vegas also has a new feature in the Bellagio Buffet that will feature dishes from the other Bellagio restaurants, read here on a new station addition for lunch or dinner buffet.
24) Giordano’s pizza locations are expanding from it’s single Grand Bazaar strip location to a new 2nd location at Boca Park, read EATER Vegas here. Like it or not it’s popular enough to open another location in Las Vegas. And yes with the toppings I prefer it’s a freaking lasagna minus noodles in a deep dish pizza crust…but hey I like lasagna!!!!
25) Finally watch this recent “Living in Las Vegas” youtube episode here about SLS. There is someone that comes up and speaks to them about the All Net Arena that will be built next door at 7:22. Now while this is completely unsubstantiated but wouldn’t it be a hoot if Alex Merulo’s company was also the financial backer to All Net Resort and Arena, as well as negotiating a purchase of a NBA team?
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! Another busy week…
- Las Vegas aficionado Blonde4ever details the increased decibel levels that have taken place in the many stages throughout Fremont Street.
- Kenzie Marie explores the shooting locations of Rick’s Restorations, Count’s Kustoms, and Welder Up in Las Vegas.
- Chief Editor LasVegasJunkie returns with the Las Vegas Junkie Podcast Episode 5… the official-unofficial Vegas Bright Podcast. You didn’t ask for it, so we delivered anyway!
- Guest Writer Scott K. dives headfirst into some of Las Vegas’ most infamous dive bars.
- Guest Writer Chris W. crosses an item off his bucket-list and shares his Wynn Golf Course experience 3-days before the course permanently closed.
That’s all Folks!
[Photo Cred. LasVegasJunkie]
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.
