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The game’s not the thing
From museums to condos, casinos seek ways to develop revenue from customers off the gaming floor
Does crime pay? Vegas sometimes downplays its historic mob links, but organised sin may pay better than property development for casinos, or at least Tropicana hopes so.
This month it debuts its Las Vegas Mob Experience, a museum featuring more than 1000 artifacts including cars driven by Bugsy Siegel, vintage photos, and videos of gangland figures in reminiscent mode, as well as interactive displays created by former Disney Imagineers.
It’s just the latest attempt by casino operators in Vegas and elsewhere to keep visitors as customers even when they’re away from the gaming floor.
But not all have been the bottom-line boons foreseen. Indeed, whoever suggested that MGM Resorts and Dubai World – the joint-venture partners in the massive CityCenter development – should incorporate 2400 residential property units would, in a past Vegas, probably be sleeping with the fishes by now.
CityCenter’s owners last year made $490m from selling condos in the development, which has three high-rise residential towers, the Mandarin Oriental, Vdara and Veer. However, that equated to just 436 of the 2400 units, at an average price of a little over a million dollars – and sales nearly ground to a halt during the fourth quarter, when a mere 26 were bought.
Hurt like many property developers by the Great Recession, CityCenter execs are now trying to generate some value from the empty condos by renting them out; so far, only 85 have been filled.
