This Week's LVW col: Be grateful, Bethlehem

Here's this week's Strip Sesne column from the Las Vegas Weekly, a defense of -- apologia for? -- the idea of gaming as an economic revival tool. Which is funny because I don't even gamble. Much. -sf

An east target, a misguided notion

Why the people of Bethlehem, Pa., should be grateful for, not suspicious of, their new casino

By STEVE FRIESS

The day after the May 22 opening of the quite lovely Las Vegas Sands casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the local newspaper, the Express-News, ran with a news bulletin on its website: “Easy ways to stay safe at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem; two patrons report missing wallets.”

We then met Nancy Miller, 61, of New Joisey, who bought a snack at the food court and “shortly thereafter noticed her wallet missing,” and 25-year-old Dominique Alexander of Philadelphia, who left her wallet on a slot machine and “found it had been taken” when she returned.

Stop the presses! People lose shit! The intrepid journalist on the case turned to About.com for news-you-can-use tips on how not to let “loss, theft and other problems spoil your Memorial Day weekend fun at the casino,” which essentially boiled down to: Keep track of your shit.

Yes, this is an example of ridiculous journalism. There’s no chance any serious newspaper would have done a story on these careless people if they had misplaced their wallets at, say, a new Starbucks. Nor would they have drawn the inference that people need tips on how to stay safe at all coffeehouses.

But to me, it was more than that; it was the culmination of a couple of days focusing on a foreign land where a casino was a new and troublesome presence to many. As I covered the Sands opening, I was reminded yet again of how ridiculous the nation’s love-hate affair with Las Vegas and the gambling business has become.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

The Show is UP: Engelbert The Engaging

Miles is back -- though still feeling crummy -- and we have a winner -- actually two, sorta -- for the Cinevegas tickets contest. Also, find out what SLS Way was for and hear our chat with Engelbert. You know the drill: click on the date below to listen or right-click and save to your computer. Or subscribe (it's free!) via this iTunes link or via this Zune link. -sf

June 11: Engelbert Humperdinck

In our quest to cover all the classic old-timers of Vegas lore, one fixture we hadn’t yet caught up with was Englebert Humperdinck, the British chart-topper who was first brought to the Strip in 1968 by none other than Dean Martin. Humperdinck, now 73, talks about everything from Liberace to Lambert, recalls Howard Stern's playing with his hair, explains why James Blunt fits in the canon with Clapton and McCartney and discusses the fact that his rival, Tom Jones, has received a knighthood while he has not. Humperdinck performs in Vegas at the Orleans on June 11-14 playing his hits as well as the contemporary pop songs he covered in his 2007 album, “The Winding Road.”

In Banter: Danny Gans’ cause of death, the Cinevegas passes contest winner, the future of the TI, Steve’s show spree, changes at Peepshow, Robuchon’s odd discount and the Chippendales do Paris.

Links To Stuff Discussed:

Engelbert Humperdinck’s website
Tickets for Engelbert Humperdinck’s shows June 11-14 at the Orleans
The shirtless Engelbert Humperdinck “Release Me” video
VegasHappensHere.Com photos and links regarding the Treasure Island changes
Pictures of the Wynn Sky Casino
Joel Robuchon’s “discount” menus
VegasHappensHere.Com on the Peepshow changes
The YouTube version of the special video edition of The Strip from Bethlehem, Pa.
Hear the Gans death press conference

Adelson Wishes He'd Fired Weidner Sooner

I had an extremely brief -- maybe 10-minute -- interview Friday evening with Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson as I prepared my New York Times piece on the opening of the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem. But gosh, what a 10-minute interview. He talked up the Bethlehem property, of course, but he also wandered into areas I hadn't even planned to discuss.

Most importantly, he was fresh off the plane from Macau and said he believes he may have the financing in place to restart construction of the resorts on the Cotai Strip and the hotel and shopping at the Bethlehem site by the end of 2009. With the Times' blessing -- owing to a shrinking business-section freelance budget -- I did an Agence France-Presse wire service story about this development.

Ah, but there was more. In March, longtime top lieutenant William Weidner, the chief operating officer, left the company. He says he quit; Adelson has said he fired him. This culminated an epic internal struggle against the backdrop of LVS' stock freefalling from an October 2007 high of $148 to a low of less than $2 earlier this year.

I asked Adelson whether he would have done anything differently in the past year or so and this was his wallop of an answer:

"Would I have done anything different? Yes, I would’ve fired Bill Weidner a long time ago. He created a financing situation that was completely inappropriate. Now we’re getting financing that’s more appropriate. What I’d like to say, unequivocally, is it’s not a matter of the [Macau] market. The market is good, very good. You cannot change the culture of Chinese people and their love to challenge luck. If there’s some bumps in the road in terms of everything going 100 percent perfect. Our numbers have been going up and the [Macau peninsula, where casinos have long clustered and now include Sands Macao, Wynn Macau and MGM Mirage Macau] have been going down. [The Cotai Strip is] standing out as a separate must-see attraction in the city of Macau."

Before I could even ask another question, Adelson was off and running again. Steve Wynn has lambasted LVS in Asia and MGM Mirage on the Strip, particularly on Jon Ralston's TV show, for overambitious plans that lacked proper financing. Adelson battled back on that one:

"I wish I had accelerated the construction [in Macau], not cut down on it. I hear that our competitors like Steve Wynn fault us by saying, 'Oh they went too far, too fast, and they never should have built so much.' In the meantime, what’s the bottom line of our company versus other companies? Even in the economic tsunami that we’re experiencing, we’re still doing better than other companies on a proportional basis. Much better."

It's hard to know exactly what he means here, but thanks to Hunter Hillegas at RateVegas.Com for providing me with some data from recent SEC filings for comparison's sake. He found that the Wynn Macau and Sands Macao had average daily room rates in the first quarter of 2009 of $268, higher than the $216 garnered by the Venetian Macao, which is Cotai. As for the revenue per room in the same period, Sands Macao got $260, Wynn Macau got $223 and Venetian Macao got $216. So on both measures, Adelson's own property on the Macau peninsula was doing better than his property on Cotai. In Vegas, Wynn-Encore got an average rate of $222, higher than Venetian's $209 and Palazzo's $221. So it's pretty close on that front but it's hard to see how Adelson claims a clear victory in any of these markets.

Adelson did say that the one project he does not expect to restart by year's end are the St. Regis luxury condos on the Strip that now stand half-built. Yet he said that could happen, too, if he can create a situation where the developer is also the lender so the buyers can get the credit to close that banks are reluctant to provide. (Photo left by Isaac Brekken for my NYT piece in March on the Vegas condo market.)

I asked Bill Lerner, the ex-Deutsche Bank gaming analyst who now has his own firm called Union Gaming Group, about this notion. He said it's not farfetched and he expects MGM Mirage to do the same with some of their condos at CityCenter.

"I think we’ll see that with some of the residential development in the Strip corridor where the protects are built or nearly built. The operator/developer will structure seller financing. Where’s the downside? If they move ahead and do something like that, it allows them to close and collect interest payments. It’s the best alternative given the current set of circumstances."

Lerner, incidentally, is quoted in my AFP piece speculating that LVS will sell off some assets or take on equity-sharing partners to finish the stalled projects.

Finally, Adelson again defended his approach and he brought up the fact that he put $1 billion of his own money into the company to keep it afloat.

"Unless somebody thinks completely ignorant of the facts, I think I made an educated and informed investment decision that was a good decision on our part that saved our company and now we live to fight another day. I took $1 billion out of my family’s piggy bank. How many people would do that?"

Not ever having that kind of wealth, I honestly cannot say.

Breaking: People Lose Stuff At Casinos!

Sorry to keep going with the Bethlehem stuff, but this is too funny not to share. The Express-News in Bethlehem, Pa., where Las Vegas Sands opened a 3,000-slot casino on Friday, had this headline atop a report on their website on Saturday:

"Easy ways to stay safe at Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem;
two patrons report missing wallets"

We then learn that two women lost their wallets on opening day. One bought some food and then couldn't find it. She lost $220 she probably wouldn't have gone home with anyhow. The other lady admits she left it on a slot machine and when she returned for it, it was gone.

Now, I feel for these women. I do. I'm on record as being a total loser. But! If the lady had left her wallet on a table at Wendy's and came back to find it gone, would this be worth reporting in the newspaper? Would all fast-food joints and Dave Thomas himself be guilty by association? The intrepid journalist here offered up some surefire ways to avoid this fate, courtesy of About.Com. The experts apparently recommend you, uh, keep track of your shit. Stop the presses!

Of course, casino-hating commenters blamed the casino. Among the remarks:

Casinos are a robber's paradise. Wherelse can you find half-looped careless people loaded with money who don't pay attention to anything other than the rotating fruit on the machine in front of them?

You have to expect this kind of behavior in a house of gambling. Thefts like these happen in Vegas and AC and anywhere you have casinos, its just going to happen. I was wondering how long after the doors were opened on Friday it would be before we'd see an action like this reported.

Look at the dempgraphic [sic] that feeds these places!! Old people, mostly women, widowed women who are desparetly [sic] trying to spend all of their husbands hard earned money. Money he earned working weekends and holidays to provide for this blue haired biotch that sat home made dinner and did the laundry.

Yikes, huh?

Unions Heart Sands and Sheldon!

No, your eyes do not deceive you. Despite Las Vegas Sands and CEO Sheldon Adelson in particular being seen as Public Enemy No. 1 by the unions in Las Vegas, this was a full-page ad in the Express-Times in Bethlehem on Friday celebrating the opening of the casino there. (I had to scan in three parts and piece it together).

I asked LVS spokesman Ron Reese about this odd turn of events. He proudly reported that the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem is "100 percent union built."

He said they used "some" union labor for building the hotels in Las Vegas. But he had a grin on his face that told me I was not wrong to find this all quite ironic. It was only earlier this month that litigation between LVS and the Culinary 226 in Las Vegas over issues related to the opening of Venetian in 1999 were finally fully ended. The Venetian-Palazzo is the largest non-union shop on the Strip and the halls of the Culinary's downtown offices are adorned with photos of massive protests against Adelson. I want to say there's even photos of people holding pickets in which Adelson has the devil's horns on him.

Yet in the Keystone State, they're 100 percent union built and proud of it! (The service workers are not union, though.) Not only that, but the company spent $743 million to build a casino in a jurisdiction where they'll have to hand over 55 percent of the gaming revenue to the state!?!

What does Bethlehem and Harrisburg have that Vegas and Carson City don't? Anyone?

Sands Bethlehem Pictorial 3: The Quirk

As always, there were other odds and ends from my exposure to Bethlehem and the Sands Bethlehem casino there to share. This, above, was among those, the fact that they charge $7 -- and I heard people said things like, "Oh, that's a lucky number" -- for valet parking. The only hotel that charges for valet parking in Vegas that I know of is the Four Seasons.

Let's see...what else. Well, I found it a bit shocking that Las Vegas Sands would build a casino in a jurisdiction where the state takes a 55 percent share of the gaming revenue. Did you people in Carson City trying to find a few more sheckels between the cushions hear that? LVS thinks it's worth it to spend $743 million to build a thing where they'll get 45 percent of the revenue!

Hey, remember that big crane with the Sands logo on it? Well, look at what they've got attached to it:


This was what is known as a very, very soft opening. Besides the fact that they didn't have the hotel or mall ready -- and won't for more than a year -- the belly-up bar (as Hunter and Mike E call the central-casino bars) didn't even have matchbooks. So I was reduced to doing this for a souvenir:


They had a gift shop called Sands & Co., I think, which is a strange name. I did pick up a couple of T-shirts, a mug and a shotglass I plan to sell off to support the show for $30 or more. Something in the gift shop I did NOT buy:


As you can tell from my other posts as well as my radio, podcast and newspaper work on this story, these folks are very proud of their steel heritage. So proud, in fact, that when Mayor John Callahan took me to another part of the city to see a redevelopment project, I spotted this mural on the wall of a gym:


I also thought it was cute that Bethlehem's non-steel-related nickname is the Christmas City. People mail their mail there in December to get special Christmas-related stamps. Here's some:


Back at the casino, it was also interesting that there are designated nonsmoking areas such as this. That's what that yellow sign says.


You might recall from a recent post here that not only do none of the Vegas joints offer such a thing to my knowledge, but at the Palazzo (owned by LVS, natch) this sign stands in the casino...


...without giving any indication of where said corridor is.

Of course, I loved checking out the Express-Times, the local paper, as they celebrated and reported this opening. Here's the cover of the Exposed section, the Friday entertainment section:



Of course, everything is overdone with gambling cliches. The front-page headline, for instance, was "Today, all bets are on," for instance. That piece included some advice from Michael Bluejay of VegasClick.Com on how to beat the slots. His answer, essentially: You can't.

They might as well learn sooner than later, huh?

Sands Bethlehem Pictorial 1: The Inside

It was a long, fascinating day in Bethlehem, Pa., where Las Vegas Sands opened its 137,000-square-foot, 3,000-slot steel-themed casino atop a former ore pit on the grounds of the late great Bethlehem Steel Co. You can read my New York Times piece and for more on the significance to Bethlehem and to LVS as well.

You can also watch this special 10-minute video edition of The Strip. The interview with two very colorful women anchor the episode and, also, I scared a baby. It's in the podcast feed so you can subscribe via iTunes or, also, as you can see, I posted it on YouTube.



You can also hear me describe the joint live from the scene on KNPR on Friday. As I said in that appearance, Sands Bethlehem is surprisingly coherent and classy, having adapted a lot of architectural cues from the historic steel business that built and then vacated the city. LVS owns about 150 acres and has halted, for now, construction of a 300-room hotel and a large retail area because of the credit crunch.


The place has four restaurants right now including Emeril's Chophouse. Chef Lagasse was on site today to open it and plans two more restaurants here. This is his first restaurant in the northeastern U.S. Below, folks are trying to see him in the kitchen...


...and here's the wine racks...


...and the menu. (Click to make it big enough to read.)


Here's a cocktail waitress in one of her color-appropriate, demure-for-Vegas outfits:


I liked how the bars were named for steel-related things, like Coil and Molten. And As you can see, there's a Sands Lager on tap.


You're never far away here from Vegas...


...but oddly the MySands players club is not linked to the Grazie Club that LVS uses for Macau and Las Vegas. That is, you can't earn comps in Vegas here. That's a strange decision. LVS has never had another domestic U.S. location before other than Las Vegas, but it would seem like they'd want to use such incentives to lure people to Vegas, no? That's how Harrah's, Boyd and MGM Mirage do it, right?

Nonetheless, the rush was on to get one of those cards:


Here's the map of the casino as it is now:


Later this year, LVS is supposed to add 2,000 more slot machines here:


No table games, per Pennsylvania law. Instead, you get this stupid game which I've always hated and been creeped out by:


I did find this water feature right at the lobby entrance to be very pretty:


There'll be two more posts, one with images of the outside and around Bethlehem and, of course, one with all the weird and quirky stuff I noticed. Stick around!

Sands Bethlehem Pictorial 2: The Outside

I managed to get away from the casino for a while thanks to a little walking and bus tour that Mayor John Callahan took me on. Unfortunately, my camera battery died halfway through or I'd have many more photos of the incredibly charming old buildings and the nifty cafe, Wired, where I wrote my NYT piece.

Still, this is the view of the Bethlehem Steel plant, where the casino now stands beyond those blast furnaces, from the next bridge up the Lehigh River. Here's a closer look at the blast furnaces, which are to be the basis for a national museum focused on industrial American history:


On June 9, when LVS officially holds its formal grand opening, the company will start lighting up the old furnaces at night similar to how this is done in Germany.


This image, in fact, is taken from Callahan's latest State of the City report.

This iconic crane in front of the casino is the original crane, one of two, that moved ore in the pit upon which the Sands Bethlehem has been built. LVS owns the entire piece of property all the way to the blast furnaces.


Here's the outside of the casino which, truth be told, is the least interesting part of it. That white structure to the right is the parking garage.

LVS is obligated to build a 300-room hotel and a large retail space. That shell of a building sticking up behind that silo-looking thing is the hotel. Construction was halted last summer when LVS suffered a major credit crunch that also stopped construction in Macau and in Vegas.


Finally, remember Georgine from the special video edition of "The Strip"? Well, when she said she lived across the street, she meant it. This is the view from the third level of the parking garage:


On Sunday, I'll get into the quirky stuff, so come on back!

First Look: Sands Bethlehem

I can't write much right now because I've got to do a few more interviews for my NYT piece and then take a ride with the mayor to get an orientation of Bethlehem, but I did want to post a couple of shots and a promise of much more later. There'll also be a special video episode of The Strip coming and you can hear me in a taped segment on KNPR at around 9:40 a.m. PT at KNPR.org or 88.9 FM.

My initial impressions is that they've done a really lovely job with this place. In sum, they've built a steel-themed casino, see:


More on this later. Gotta run in a sec.

For those of you unaware, Las Vegas Sands (owner of Venetian and Palazzo) is opening today the casino portion of a $713 million project. They had to postpone the 300-room hotel, the convention space and retail because of the financial crunch. They are building all of this on the former ore pit that served Bethlehem Steel, the company that produced the steel that built skyscrapers like the Empire State Building as well as the the railroads and much of the military armaments. The company went kaput in 2003 and left Bethlehem, about 75 miles north of Philly, somewhat desolate.

Sort of. There's more to it than that, but that's all I have time for at the moment. But this is the very definition of a "soft" opening. The 3,000 slot machines are working great, but the bar has no matchbooks? There are so many cars, I'm told, that the company's top lawyer is working valet. Yikes!

Up and out early...

...heading to Bethlehem, Pa., to cover the opening this morning of the new $600 million Sands casino built in an iconic former steel mill there for the Times. Got really lucky and caught a good story nearby, relatively speaking, while visiting my sister in the Philly burbs. Will Tweet about it and post photos later. Oh, and I'm scheduled to be on KNPR's State of Nevada this morning, too, live from the scene. Then back here for Shabbas with the family. Should be a nice day if I don't get lost en route, which is likely!