When Gaming Execs Can't STFU

Here's this week's LVW col, which avid readers of this space recall from its draft form two days ago when it was posted for a couple of hours before I decided to expand it into a full column. Enjoy! -sf

Casino execs: Why all the hatin'?
Vegas collegiality only seems to work in times of plenty

By STEVE FRIESS

"There is an unwritten rule within the gaming industry: Don't disrupt another casino operator's grand opening."

Review-Journal gaming scribe Howard Stutz's Sunday column about the decision by Boyd Gaming to issue its Station counter-offer on Aria’s opening day contained this hilarious line. It’s not hilarious because Stutz is wrong. He’s totally right. It’s hilarious because he wrote about Boyd’s untoward acts of last week, when he easily could have been talking about Sheldon Adelson, Donald Trump, Phil Ruffin, Steve Wynn or even George Maloof.

As Stutz wrote, Boyd did themselves no favors dropping a bomb that would've been front-page news on a normal day last week. But at least Boyd didn't try to steal the spotlight the same way Adelson, Trump and Ruffin did. Consider:

* Adelson gave his onceish-a-year in-depth interview to Forbes' Matthew Miller on Aria's Opening Day. It's a fascinating exchange in which Adelson goes on about how important his Forbes billionaire's list ranking is in a manner I've never heard any mogul speak. And as for CityCenter? "Even though there is a lot of publicity about it, I haven't heard anyone who's seen it tell me it is going to be a winner. They have no strategy. They have no obvious plan. If they try to compete in the travel and tour business, they will cannibalize all their other properties, like the Bellagio. They don't have a convention space big enough to make an impact. So they built it without a strategy. How ill-advisable is that?"

* Trump: He went on "Larry King Live" on Aria Eve to declare CityCenter ugly, "an absolute catastrophe." Norm Clarke of the R-J theorized that Trump was reacting to MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren's remark to me for my L.A. Weekly opus that the Trump tower in Vegas is hardly prime-time stuff. Either way, MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman had probably the most hilarious comeback of the year, telling Norm of Trump, "I can hardly imagine anyone's opinion that matters less than his." That didn't sit well with Trump, who couldn't bear to give his competitor the last word. He dashed off a hand-written note to Norm, who published it on Saturday, that read: "The CityCenter is architecturally unappealing -- It will be the biggest bust in the history of real estate -- good concept but badly designed and really badly executed. Too bad."

* Ruffin: The owner of the Treasure Island is painted in another Forbes piece out this weekend as something of a savior of CityCenter for buying the resort from MGM Mirage when they were desperate for cash. Ruffin's happy to play that role, sure, but then he drops this completely buried bomb: "They have so many billions of dollars of debt on that project. They are going to have to make so much money every month just to service that debt. That's going to force the MGM guys to go through a lot of pain again, and they'll have to renegotiate their debt but probably also sell off another property or two. I've got at least $500 million in cash and loans I haven't drawn down. And I'd love to own the Bellagio or Mandalay Bay." Shame, really, that he's putting Gilley's in the TI when it would've been so great where the underperforming Conservatory is, you know? But maybe he could get Cirque du Soleil to give him a "Cold Beer, Dirty Girls"-themed show for Mandalay Bay?

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

Pix I Forgot I Had, Re: TI

I totally forgot I had these on my camera, probably because they're not very good. But in light of how much interest there has been in this week's Strip Sense piece on the Ruffinized Treasure Island, I figured what the hell. Above is the rendering of what the Gilley's at the TI will look like.

And some folks were confused as to the references in the column to expanding the viewing area for the Sirens show. Well, here's what the boardwalk looks like now...


...and here's what they plan to do with it.


Work will be done, Phil Ruffin says, this summer when they drain the lagoon for a month for annual repairs and such.

Now I'm off to a busy day. I'm checking out three shows today/tonight in a feverish effort to fill in gaps in my Vegas show knowledge. And I'll be on Nevada Week in Review tonight talking politics. That show airs at Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at noon on Channel 10. The show's also available on iTunes.

This week's LVW Col: Phil Ruffin Reveals TI Plans

Here's this week's Strip Sense column from the Las Vegas Weekly. Don't skip the jump to the full column if you really want to know what all Ruffin's plans are for the TI. But here's one big hint: Mechanical bulls are BACK! Yee-haw! -sf

The Anti-Wynn

Phil Ruffin reveals big plans for that neglected niche: the mid-market

By STEVE FRIESS

I was a bit confused when I showed up at the Treasure Island on Monday for lunch with its new owner, Phil Ruffin, and his assistant told me on the house phone to meet the Kansas billionaire at Francesco’s Pizzeria. I asked her to repeat that a few times, certain I had misheard her.

You see, until a few minutes before, Francesco’s was not a pizza joint. It was a serious, high-end Italian restaurant that was named by Steve Wynn himself as a tribute to Frank Sinatra. Had they created a spinoff? “Oh, we closed that up a little while ago and opened up this place,” said Ruffin, 72, squeezing into a booth after apologizing for no apparent reason for wearing a suit today. “This place does triple the business.”

The new Francesco’s has been moved from “Upscale Dining” to “Casual Dining” on the Treasure Island website. It offers serviceable paninis and pizzas, nothing too fancy or expensive. Out went the heavy china and stuffy service, in came a lunch shift.

“People don’t want high-end these days, certainly not from this place,” Ruffin said. “We’re getting all kinds of business from the Venetian, the Wynn, the Mirage, from people who don’t want to pay $15 for orange juice.”

And therein, Phil Ruffin has found his niche in the Las Vegas universe. Let MGM Mirage, Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts, Harrah’s and even Boyd Gaming scramble after the ever-diminishing top end with their fancy suites, expensive restaurants and condo sales. Ruffin flirted with all that for years as he pondered what to do with the New Frontier site, bought in the late 1990s and always slated for some form of redevelopment. By the middle of this decade, Ruffin was facing a decision on whether or not to move forward with a plan to build a Swiss-themed luxury resort, the multibillion-dollar Montreux. Images were even circulated to the press.

Just before he had to pull the trigger, he realized the thing made no financial sense for one important reason: “I’m not Steve Wynn.”

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

TONIGHT: ALL JON VOIGHT! JOIN US!

I just got off the line after an astounding, incredible 90-minute interview with Oscar winner Jon Voight that went from the secret behind his "Midnight Cowboy" physique to Angelina Jolie's first film role to his Bush-Palin love. SO...we're playing all of it tonight in lieu of a proper episode because a sickly Miles remains out of commission anyway. Voight is receiving the Vanguard Award at the Cinevegas Film Festival later this month at the Palms.

Join us in the chat at LVRocks.Com to listen to the interview and discuss it. I'll be in chat, too. We'll get started at about 6:30 p.m. so we can fit most of it in. Otherwise, grab the podcast edition when it's posted by Thursday morning. Subscribe (it's free!) in iTunes.

Breaking: Ruffin May Pay MGM The Whole $775m

Yesterday, I interviewed Phil Ruffin for a New York Times piece we later decided not to write about the minor tempest over phone calls Sens. Reid and Ensign made to "encourage" major banks to lend $1.2 billion to MGM Mirage for the completion of CityCenter.

I was interested in Ruffin's take as a fellow in the process of buying the Treasure Island off MGM Mirage. He was supportive of Reid and Ensign's efforts to help MGM. "I wouldn't jump all over them," Ruffin said. "That's exactly what your senators are supposed to do." In fact, one reason the Times lost enthusiasm for the story was that Ensign cleared making these calls with the Senate Ethics Committee and other breaking news took precedence.

But in the discussion, I asked Ruffin about the revelation last week that he was having difficulty finding outside financing $175 million of the $775 million purchase price of the TI. He's putting $600 million in cash into the deal and MGM Mirage even offered him a $20 million discount if he could get outside financing so they could just have all the money now.

Ruffin: Isn't that the craziest thing? We’re putting up $600 million and they’re asking for the moon for the banks to put up $175 million. You ‘d think with that kind of equity, it wouldn't be necessary.

VegasHappensHere: Well, if you're having that kind of trouble on a relatively small loan, who could possibly buy any assets from MGM Mirage or Harrah's even if they were selling them?

Ruffin: It would be impossible unless you’re sitting on a lot of cash. The banks are too leery, they’re jumpy about Las Vegas.

VegasHappensHere: So would you just pay the whole $775 million in cash if they asked you to?
Ruffin: Yeah, I would. I would. If it would help them out, I might just do that.

Also, Ruffin said that in retrospect the decision to build CityCenter and put so much on that 67-acre property was clearly "a mistake. I like 'em. These are friends of mine. I think Jim Murren is a class act and Kirk Kerkorian is a friend. At the time when they started this project, condos were going like crazy and MGM had a very good retail set-up, the kiosks in all their hotels and so forth. Trump and I did the same thing and we had contracts on all 1,200 units. The markets cratered and only 30 percent have closed. The same thing happened in spades to them. But I think if you asked them now, they would say it was a mistake."

Somehow I'm doubting that. At least not now. Maybe in a decade when it all blows over.

Meanwhile, it's also worth noting that I called Harrah's senior vice president Jan Jones for her take on the Reid/Ensign phone calls. She said Harrah's has not asked the senators to intervene for loans but that they also aren't building anything and don't need the capital. But Jones agreed with Ruffin that Reid/Ensign "were just speaking out in favor of the biggest industry in the state. They weren’t asking for any special favors."

Jones also expressed frustration that certain anti-Obama forces want to vilify anyone trying to help out the gaming business. She makes this interesting point:

"It’s become in vogue to bash big business and it's always ben in vogue to bash the gaming industry," she said. "I don’t think they're thinking from the policy perspective. They’re thinking in soundbites. For some reason the word casino – probably mostly thanks to Hollywood's depictions of it – has a negative connoation, but when you really look at the direct and indirect employment numbers for this industry, they're much bigger than the auto industry. This is working class America."

The Show is UP: Diamonds in the Ruffin

As mentioned in the previous post, there's some really terrific news broken in this Phil Ruffin chat. Click on the date below to listen or right-click and save to your computer. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Jan. 22: A Diamond In The Ruffin

Others may be more creative, more ambitious and more flamboyant, but nobody nobody on the modern scene today is as brillian t – or as fortunate – at making deals as Phil Ruffin. The 72-year-old Kansas billionaire sold the New Frontier land in 2007 for a record $35 million an acre before the real estate crash, and now he’s used a mere $775 million of that profit to pick up the Treasure Island. For the first time this hour, Ruffin discloses some new plans for the property, explains why he’s unlikely to ever buy a Harrah’s property and reveals the reason he’ll never build anything in Vegas. Plus, he dishes about Wynn, Trump, his young wife and the billionaires’ poker game he wins year after year.

In Banter: Obama’s Vegas stage moment, Folies, Menopause and Scintas closing, Rita will go on and on, MGM Mirage’s reservation system woes, the F’Bleau will be finished, does anyone care about Joaquin Phoenix’s music career?

Links:

Phil Ruffin’s Wikipedia bio is here
See the LV Sun’s post about Rita Rudner extending at Harrah’s here
The R-J’s report that Folies Bergere is closing here
Steve’s blog post about the Obama inauguration at the Hilton is here
The Las Vegas Sun says F-Bleau will finish no matter what here
Steve’s NYT on the mob museum is here and the Daily Show appearance is here
Norm reports Scintas and Menopause here
Doug Elfman wonders if Joaquin Phoenix’s rap career is a hoax here
MGM Mirage’s online reservation outage was only reported here
Miles’ hearts the hateful, vile Ann Coulter and Michael Savage. Find them here and here
The weird George Wallace show that Desiree referred to is here

EXCLUSIVES: Mystere to Extend 5 Years and More

My blockbuster interview with Phil Ruffin is finally up and a more traditional blog post with the show links and such is coming shortly. But there was a lot of actual news in that interview that I wanted to highlight. Here goes:

* Deal To Close On April 1. Ruffin says he's doing everything in his power to close the deal to buy the Treasure Island from MGM Mirage for $775 million by April 1. That's a bit sooner than the June 1 date first noted when the deal was announced.

* Mystere is Forever. Or Until At Least 2016. Ruffin says he is meeting with Cirque next week with the plan to extend the Cirque du Soleil production, which has three years remaining on its current contract, for another FIVE years. That would keep it running for at least 23 years. Ruffin says occupancy remains at 85 percent.

* The Buccaneer Cafe? While Ruffin had heretofore insisted he had no specific changes planned for the TI, he's now pondering carving some space out of the lagoon for a streetside cafe of some sort. "You start walking at Circus Circus past the Frontier land, past the Fashion Show Mall, and then as you go down the casinos – Treasure Island, Mirage, Caesars, there’s no place for them to sit and eat. There should be something like that out there.

* A Bentsen-Quayle Moment In The Mirror. Ruffin says he was ready to sign off on the financing to build the Montreux, a luxury Swiss-themed resort on the Frontier property, but backed out at the last minute. Why? "I’m no Steve Wynn. I’m not at that level. He’s way above me. I didn’t think I could" build something as beautiful that would get Wynn's room rates. And to make the deal's math worked, he needed to make that kind of money.

* Thanks, But No Thanks ... To Harrah's: This exchange was fascinating.

Ruffin: I would not buy a Harrah’s property.
Friess: How come?
Ruffin: Because they have that Total Rewards system. And they can move those customers to wherever they want to move them to. So let’s say Paris is doing $100 million a year. They can take those customers away from me damn near overnight. Friess: But MGM Mirage has a rewards program, too.
Ruffin: Yeah, but we’re patched into that.
Friess: And Harrah’s wouldn’t allow you to…
Ruffin: Well, we didn’t approach to Harrah's.
Friess: Do you think that makes it harder for Harrah’s to sell of one of their properties?
Ruffin: I do, I do.

* No Leaky Ship. Ruffin disclosed that the Frontier hotel had 169 roof leaks when he bought it. How many does the TI have? "None!" he laughs.

* The Check Is On The Wall. This isn't in the interview, but it's too good a detail not to mention. There's not much on Ruffin's walls. But one thing caught my eye: a framed check for $171,953,438. “That’s my check to the IRS last year,” he says, “so don’t let anyone ever tell you the rich don’t pay taxes.” Hear that, Mr. Mayor? That's enough for three mob museums.

The Strip is LIVE @ 6:45 p.m. PT w/ Phil Ruffin

We've got a newsmaking chat with soon-to-be Treasure Island owner Phil Ruffin coming up tonight. I hesitate to even hint at some of the stuff he told me in this conversation until at least I've aired the audio. But it's so good, I'll probably post something more specific on Wednesday.

Still, if you want to be the first to hear it, join us live at LVRocks.Com from 6:45-8 pm for the live chat and streaming audio.

MGM Mirage Firesale Begins!

As my colleague Robin Leach correctly predicted last night, MGM Mirage announced this morning it is selling the Treasure Island for $775 million to reclusive aging billionaire Phil Ruffin. I can't find how many acres the TI sits on -- this and several other sites say 100 acres. If that's so, that's $7.75 million an acre for the land alone, a heckuva deal seeing how there's a decent business standing on it at the moment, too. Ruffin himself set the record by getting $35 million an acre out of the Elad suckers for the Frontier property about 20 months ago. So is $7.75 million the new watermark?

This is actually pretty good news for the mid-ranged property inasmuch as Ruffin got high marks for bringing peace and stability to the disastrous New Frontier in 1999, at least before he flipped it. It was razed, of course, to make way for a whole lotta nothing.

Wall Street was happy with MGM, rewarding the debt-larded behemoth with a 18 percent surge in stock price at the opening and its highest price in a month. You can read the press release here. I especially love Ruffin talking about the TI as being in "pristine condition," as if he were buying a rare coin.

The TI's employees probably can heave a sigh of relief not felt in the rest of the MGM Mirage universe, where just last week the Bellagio let go all part-timers at the front desk for the rest of the year. That is, until Ruffin flips the place. Which he's bound to do. But until then, the TI is the crown jewel in his collection of Marriotts. How fun for him.

On the downside, the TI is a resort that is easily forgotten and benefits greatly from its crossmarketing angle with the other MGM Mirage properties. It's unclear how it'll do without that network. In fact, Steve Wynn all but acknowledged to me at one point that the place was the bastard child of his creations, the one he did in a hurry with a lesser budget.

No word on the implosion date, but it's said Mystere will continue to play twice a night on the site even after the rest of the place has been demolished.

So, folks...what's next? Is it tasteless to talk about Monte Carlo in the context of a fire sale?