The Las Vegas-based construction-equipment firm Ahern Rentals has purchased the shuttered nine-story Lucky Dragon hotel for about $36 million and plans to reopen it within 60 days according to Chairman and CEO Don Ahern.
He plans to convert the former casino 203-room hotel, which is located off the Las Vegas Strip into a convention center by the holidays. The facility was the first hotel casino to spring into being after the Great Recession. It aimed to attract the Asian market, but its aim fell far short. It generated about $35.2 million the first year, which was about a quarter of what had been anticipated.
It closed two years after opening in 2016 and filed for bankruptcy in February 2018. Last October the management shut the facility and its lender Snow Covered Capital foreclosed. It sold to Ahern at a deep discount.
The developer of the casino hotel and the prior management have been sued by some of the estimated 180 Asian investors who each paid $550,000 and were promised Green Cards in return. This raised about $90 million, which was used to build and operate the hotel.
They are also being sued by a Canadian who paid a $400,000 deposit to lease the hotel a month before it closed, and never got his deposit back.
An attorney for the plaintiffs Bernie Wolfsdorf, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “Losing your money is awful; on the other hand, if you don’t get a green card, that’s double punishment.” He alleges that his clients were “likely defrauded” and that losing their money meant they would unlikely to ever achieve permanent residency.
An arbitration hearing is scheduled for August.
Ahern, who bought the hotel with free title, is not named in the lawsuit, and says he is uninterested in the case or in meeting anyone involved in its development.
“I just bought a building, and I own it—lock, stock and barrel,” he told the Review-Journal.
