BREAKING: Station Casinos Lays Off 70

(UPDATE: This replaces the earlier post with a fix on the numbers.)

Station Casinos is laying off about 70 employees at the corporate level including some managers and support staff. It's not as eye-popping as the 400 that sources had cited earlier, and there's no way to officially say whether projects are delayed because other than Aliante Station, "we haven't announced any timetables for any other projects," said Lori Nelson, the corporate spokeswoman.

Aliante Station, at the extreme north end of the Las Vegas Valley, is due to debut later this year.

It's not terribly surprising that Station would be tightening its belt. Although they're not a public company anymore and don't have to report earnings in the manner they used to, the LVCVA's reporting for January and February 2008 show a gaming-revenue decline of 3.8 percent for the non-Strip Clark County and -- and this is shocking -- a 15.3 percent drop for the Boulder Strip. That's probably a good reflection on how Station's doing because the only two casinos of any significance over there are Boulder Station (owned by Station) and Sam's Town (owned by Boyd.) And the demographics for Boulder Station are an awful lot like that for the Palace, Texas and Santa Fe Stations.

Still, 70 people a company the size of Station is kind of the equivalent of the 440 middle managers fired by the mammoth MGM Mirage.

Off to the dentist now.