"Closed Las Vegas casino gets new life" by Michelle Rindels | Associated Press August 24, 2014
LAS VEGAS — The Moroccan-themed Sahara casino that once hosted Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the Beatles seemed a lost cause in 2011, when its owners declared the 59-year-old property unprofitable and closed it with little more than a vague promise to return.
SBE Group chief executive Sam Nazarian had purchased the Las Vegas Strip resort in 2007 with dreams of restoring its former glory, but the recession stalled his plans, driving the owners to close two of the three hotel towers and hawk rooms for $1 per night over Twitter.
‘‘There were some dark days,’’ said Sam Bakhshandehpour, president of Los Angeles-based SBE, which owns a variety of hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants. ‘‘But we held on.’’
The decision to cling to the shabby casino looks nothing short of prescient as the reincarnated Sahara opens as the vibrant SLS Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal said early Saturday that the resort opened just after midnight following a lavish reception for 3,600 guests and a fireworks display.
As the casino reinvents itself, it is ushering in a renaissance at the tired north end of the Las Vegas Strip, which for years had been home to empty lots, low-budget motels, and half-built mega-resorts with their frozen construction cranes looming nearby.
Since construction began on the SLS, which stands for ‘‘Style, Luxury, Service,’’ a Malaysian conglomerate announced plans to fold the half-finished Echelon casino into Resorts World Las Vegas.
Australian casino giant Crown Resorts bought the land where the New Frontier casino once stood. An open-air concert venue set to house the massive Rock in Rio USA music festival next spring is in the works, and Walgreens has started building a store across the street.
‘‘Global gaming companies with deep pockets are investing in the north end of the Strip, and that bodes well for the north end of the Strip and the SLS,’’ said Michael Paladino, an analyst with Fitch Ratings.
SLS Las Vegas’ debut marks the first major resort opening since The Cosmopolitan’s in late 2010, and it is likely the last one to open for another four years or so.
SBE spent $415 million gutting the casino, giving it a playful makeover at the hand of French designer Philippe Starck and stuffing it with all the trendy restaurants the company has been cultivating in Southern California.
Restaurant-centric SLS comes online at precisely the right time — Las Vegas visitors have awakened from their recession slumber hungry for fine food and nightlife and less inclined to gamble. The SLS is poised to capture their hearts and non-gambling dollars with celebrity chef Jose Andres’ Bazaar Meat, gourmet burger joint Umami, and The Griddle Cafe, a Los Angeles staple whose larger-than-life pancakes draw seemingly endless lines for Saturday brunch.
The casino floor is back, but it is smaller and spills over into the restaurants and bars.
Rooms, which start at about $100 a night, are airy and modern, with white sofas under the windows, mirrors on the walls and above the bed, and whimsical details like a monkey print on the ironing board cover.
‘‘We’re approachable luxury,’’ SLS Las Vegas president Rob Oseland said. The average SBE customer is 38, about 10 years younger than the average Las Vegas visitor, Oseland said.
Sahara marquees once touted shows by Judy Garland, Don Rickles, and Sonny and Cher, but now they’ trumpet Australian it-girl Iggy Azalea’s opening Friday night show. Gone is the Sahara’s small roller coaster and six-pound burrito-eating challenge; that gave way to a beer garden, nightclubs, and a pool club.
The typical Las Vegas Strip casino overhaul includes a dramatic implosion of the old building, but SBE made do with the original skeleton of the Sahara.
It cost about one-tenth of what a ground-up rebuild would cost, and it allowed SBE to play off the rich past of the Sahara while transforming it beyond recognition.
‘‘There’s something special about bringing something back to life. It was absolutely humbling,” Bakhshandehpour said.
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Related: Shift of gambling from Atlantic City gains momentum
Looks like casinos now $tink.
"Christian right, political left unite in opposing casinos; Fight spawns a most unlikely alliance" by Mark Arsenault | Globe staff August 24, 2014
Politics famously makes strange bedfellows, but this odd coupling is as strange as it gets: On the issue of casino gambling, the liberal left and the Christian right share common ground, united in hoping to keep the gambling industry out of Massachusetts.
“For all the polarization that goes on in Massachusetts, this is a momentous opportunity for us to come together on a common cause,” said Kris Mineau, president emeritus of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which is associated with Focus on the Family, the socially conservative organization founded by evangelical Christian author James Dobson.
Casino gambling, Mineau said, is “a regressive tax on the poor,” attracting gamblers who cannot afford to lose what money they have. The Massachusetts Family Institute “will be working to get out the vote in November,” in favor of repeal, he said.
It is a rare case in which Mineau sounds a lot like Ben Wright, director of Progressive Massachusetts, a left-leaning statewide grass-roots organization.
“A progressive economy does not put in big businesses that suck money out of the small businesses,” said Wright. “We’re obviously very supportive of the repeal.”
Polling in Massachusetts has long found that people who identify themselves as “very liberal” or “very conservative” are a significant part of the political base of the anticasino movement, said casino specialist Clyde Barrow, chairman of the political science department at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, and formerly of the University of Massachusetts system.
Casino gambling, considered both as an economic and a social issue, “cuts across all the traditional divisions,” said Barrow. “It’s not a Republican or Democrat issue or a liberal-conservative issue. It crosses the political and ideological spectrum.”
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The rivals are in unlikely alliance, as members of a political coalition defending the 2011 casino law. The coalition includes other entities that are not natural political allies, such as business-backed chambers of commerce and labor unions, “all coming together to support gaming because of the real jobs and real benefits that come with it,” said Justine Griffin, a spokeswoman for the coalition defending the casino law.
A Boston Globe poll this week found that 50 percent of likely voters support keeping the casino law, while 41 percent want to repeal it. The figures have been consistent across the past several weekly polls.
The fix is in.
The repeal campaign is quietly underway, with both sides focusing at the moment on building networks of supporters for street-level campaigning and get-out-the-vote activities.
Casino opponents, who expect to be widely outspent by the gambling companies in the campaign, will lean heavily this fall on the influence of clergy who oppose casinos, said John Ribeiro, chairman of the statewide campaign to repeal the casino law.
Religious leaders played a prominent role in several municipal referendums on casinos last year and were especially active in East Boston, where opponents defeated a $1 billion casino proposal.
“They are a natural ally of ours,” Ribeiro said. “We are looking for them to help activate their members for the fight.”
Bishop Douglas John Fisher, leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and a strong supporter of casino repeal, said he will encourage clergy in the diocese’s 65 parishes to speak about the casino repeal from the pulpit and to host community forums on the issue.
Fisher’s crisp political message is an economic argument against casinos, cast in the language of faith: “Jesus comes to bring good news to the poor. Casinos are bad for the poor. We follow Jesus.”
The anticasino campaign can expect some more help in the next two to three weeks, when the state’s top Roman Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, are expected to weigh in on the repeal campaign through the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the church’s public policy office. James F. Driscoll, director of the conference, said in an e-mail that he expects the state’s bishops will endorse the repeal.
That will put the dice to the test.
The Rev. Richard McGowan, a Boston College casino specialist, said gambling itself is not a sin under Catholic teaching, though the state’s bishops have historically opposed casinos which they believe would hurt the poor.
Plus bingo night at the church is always a big revenue producer.
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Also see: Couple win $2.4 million slots jackpot
It must be the luck of crackpots.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: Mohegan Sun may have violated deal with Palmer landowner
Already caught cheating, huh?
