Sh*t You May Have Missed… Like Golden Gate’s 112th Anniversary

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

1) Well, this didn’t take long, just a few short months after being formed the REIT Spin-off of the CEOC bankruptcy (old Caesars Entertainment Operating Company) that was turned over to the bankruptcy debtors is now getting unsolicited offers from another Gaming REIT to be bought out.  Namely MGM Growth Properties has made an offer of $19.50 an outstanding share to buy VICI Properties per LVSun read here.  VICI, of course, did not respond in any meaningful way but this is probably the first salvo in the VICI Properties saga, expect more offers/buy out offers and until VICI Properties investors get something that pays back around what CEOC owed them pre-bankruptcy as they may be willing to sit and make money off Caesars Entertainment for a while.  The interesting thing about this is that the REIT’s do not fall under the scrutiny of the Nevada Gaming Board like the Casino Operators do, it’s more of just a real estate deal to them.  UPDATE: VICI Properties says NO to buyout deal per LVRJ here.  MGM underbid and VICI did not like the structure of MGM Growth Properties.

2) Remember that robbery last week at NYNY? Well there have been two more incidents this week.  First is at Ellis Island where the robber hit the cashiers cage read LVRJ here.  The second was at the SLS where a man jumped a counter took the money and ran read fox5vegas.com news here.

3) Damn that was fast, now that CES is over the papers are saying Lucky Dragon is close to foreclosure as a foreclosure auction is scheduled for Feb. 6th  Read LVRJ here.  A lot of history and a timeline that have not been previously disclosed on the financing side.

4)  Winner, winner donuts for dinner…. DOH.  An anonymous man (but a picture of him and his girlfriend is there) hit The Simpson’s Slot Jackpot at The Cosmopolitan for $1.033M.  Read LVSun here.  Mmmmmm donuts… and he can afford a lot of them now.

5) Last weekend The Golden Gate had it’s 112th Anniversary on Jan. 13th.  LVSun has a gallery of photo’s on the event here.  Oh and by the way if you hit the article “limit” on the newspapers site, use Incognito Mode for Chrome or New Private Window in Firefox to get around the “paywall” after 10 articles read. After that open another Incognito/New Private Windows for the next 10 if it comes up again.

6) The Minnesota Vikings Miracle was a boon to a great sportsbook weekend, read LVSun here for details.  You know it’s a busy weekend when the South Point hot dog cart has a line 25 deep.  Wonder if that was the same at Suncoast as well?

7) Nevada Resort revenue hit records levels in 2017 according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, read LVSun here.  I am curious that this states Fiscal Year over Fiscal Year, if that is the case this would have been comparing Sept 2015 – End of August 2016 to Sept 2015 – End of August 2017.  If that is the case they are NOT reporting the last 4 months of the physical 2017 year namely excluding the A$$HAT event and the fall off because of that.  Is it fake news, no it is not as it states Fiscal Year.  That will show up in next years report.

8) Trump Las Vegas is suddenly finding a Sh*t Load of bad one-star reviews on Yelp saying it’s a Sh*thole, enough so to lower its Yelp standing.  Other Trump hotels are on the receiving end of this as well.  Yes this is fake reviews, but perhaps it is the fact that companies can easily pay to have positive reviews from an overseas artificial positive posting company, that it is interesting to see it happen in reverse.  Read LVSun here.

9) Very nicely done, MGM Resorts is now partnered with Three Square Food Bank to create the Surplus Banquet Food Donation Program, and about 3/4 of a Mill donated from MGM as well to feed food-insecure Southern Nevada residents by 2020.  Read LVSun here.

10) Wow, who knew Lyft was this popular?  Lyft has doubled it’s LV earnings in just two years and 2017 was it’s best year in Las Vegas read LVSun here.

11) Absinthe has a new act to introduce, the Silicon Valley Girls, read LVSun via LVWeekly here.

12) Missing Britney already? Well according to W Magazine here you only need to wait until 2019 as she’s already signed a deal to do a residency at Park Theater in 2019 (should be Park MGM/NoMad by then for the hotel side).  I do believe that Park Theater’s stage size and lack of a runway portion will make it a different show than Piece of Me was at Axis.  No mention of the amount she’s paid either.

13) The old Frontier land that Wynn bought off the Alon group and Phil Ruffin included surprise, surprise, the 2nd Trump Tower location land which was directly east of the existing Trump Tower.  Read LVRJ here.  So unless Wynn is going to build a casino for Trump that plan Ruffin had for adding a casino for Trump Tower is kinda a done deal unless they use the existing Trump Tower.

14) Golden Entertainment is selling stock to the tune of $206M due to the “higher” prices the stock has attained since purchasing ACEP read LVRJ here.  In related news a few days later LVRJ reports Golden shares tumbled almost 9% due to the announcement read here.  So in theory company was going to sell about 25% of outstanding stock on the open market, and of course the stock dropped in price as everyone might be thinking Golden bit off more than it could chew in the ACEP purchase.  We hope that is not the case, but it is the first thing that comes to mind.

15) Vital Vegas has the report that Squeeze Juice Bar at the Linq Promenade has closed, read here.  Wife and I wanted to try this out but as with most people we were heading to either Virgil’s BBQ or Ghiradelli’s and neither of those things tend to mix well with juices.

16) Has it come to this already? To “Drum” up business Mon Ami Gabi restaurant at Paris is offering a $20 off a total of $40 or more for people that paid to park.  Read Vital Vegas here for details.  Perhaps someone needs to look at VALIDATED parking?

17) MarC of EDGe Vegas has some info on the newly casino less Westin Hotel on Flamingo and why it’s a good deal for SPG frequent travelers at travelvegas.com here.  The camera angle of this hotel makes me wonder if the architect/designer is the same person that did the Michael Gaughan South Coast?

18) MarC also has the best gaming options in Henderson while at the Raiders soon to be practice facility, read here via covers.com.  To me M Resort and Green Valley Ranch for mid to upper scale, South Point for low to mid-scale except for the Sports Book.

19) MarC chimes in on a short Covers.com youtube clip on the 5 reasons he enjoys Red Rocks Resort in Summerlin here.

20) Want to try true Japanese style Karaoke in Downtown Las Vegas?  DTLV has the info here on Ninja Karaoke.  Not that I’d try any of these but watching it is usually fairly entertaining.

21) EATER Vegas has the planned opening date for Wynn Plaza has slipped to summer of 2018, but also has the two anchor dining attractions info, Urth Caffe for breakfast/lunch and then Cipriani Las Vegas for that Italian dinner, read here.

22) Bellagio will also be redoing Michael Mina’s near the conservatory and Spago should be open in the former Todd English Olives space in the summer of 2018, read EATER Vegas here.  Aria and Bellagio are undergoing a lot of food venue changes, some celebrity chef abuse related some not.

23) Advanced warning NSFW but AVN is coming to Hard Rock at the end of January, read LVSun’s LVWeekly here for details. This is a little late in January for the show, it used to be held the same week of Comdex and then CES, it’s been slowly moving away from overlapping with CES for a couple of years now to be it’s own big event in Sin City.

24) Looks like a lot of activity is happening at the Raiders Stadium site here.  Pick the North view to see the massive construction trailer complex, I haven’t seen a construction trailer glue together that large in a long while.  I’m sure from the look of it they are starting to move the underground waterway for runoff to the north of the site.  At the same time they look to be moving dirt all over the site in the last week or so and if so are doing this consecutively instead of sequentially in the construction plans.

25) Finally an image of the pre 4:30AM top 4 floor removal of the last Las Vegas Club tower per Vital Vegas twitter feed here.  Hard to believe this is taking so long to come down.  Now where is that new resort rendering we are so desperately needing?  I think that maybe if they have railroad right of way a sky bridge from west of the railroad tracks to a building to the north of the plaza and then another sky bridge over Main Street to the main Fremont Street complex.

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! We had some technical difficulties with the website earlier this week but were back up and running!

1. Vegas Bright Millennial Foodie, Michal James, returns with a review of Naked City Pizza. 
2. LasVegasJunkie, a self-proclaimed Pizza Savant, returns with a hard-hitting review of Naked City Pizza’s new El Cortez location.
3. Chief Editor LasVegasJunkie returns with the Las Vegas Junkie Podcast Episode 9… the official-unofficial Vegas Bright Podcast.

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.