NEWS & NOTES

Las Vegas’ Silverton Casino Hotel is adding a 150-room Hyatt Place hotel and about a dozen new outdoor retail outlets, mostly food and beverage venues, to its existing off-Strip resort complex near I-15 in the far southwest of the valley. The $60 million Silverton Village, as the addition is called, is expected to in phases beginning in the latter part of this year. • The Las Vegas Stadium Authority, a quasi-public agency set up by the Nevada Legislature to own a $1.8 billion domed stadium for the National Football League Raiders, has approved a $546.3 million budget for the 2018-19 fiscal year. The budget is funded by a dedicated portion of the Clark County hotel room. An increase in the tax is supporting $750 million in public bond financing to help pay for the stadium, which is scheduled to open for the start of the 2020 NFL season. • Bally’s Las Vegas has completed a renovation of its main hotel tower, a $125 million project encompassing more than 2,000 rooms and suites. The refurbishment is part of a Caesars Entertainment initiative to update its entire Las Vegas Strip hotel portfolio. Since 2014, around 65 percent of that inventory has been remodeled, a total of 15,500 rooms. • Scientific Games’ Bally Gaming division and Glory Global Solutions have become the latest to reach a settlement with the New Mexico Gaming Control Board over the 2015 supply and operation of games for the Pojoaque Pueblo while the tribe had no valid compact in place with the state. The state had threatened to deny renewal of supplier licenses in the case, in which Pojoaque sued the state in federal court alleging the state refused to negotiate a compact agreement in good faith. A judge ruled against the tribe. The parties did not announce the amounts of the settlements. • Pennsylvania Lottery spokesman Gary Miller said the new keno game tickets have been selling “like gangbusters,” according to the Scranton Times-Tribune. Since May 1, the lottery took in $2.7 million in keno sales and players have already won more than $1.8 million in prizes, Miller told the newspaper. • The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has approved a $359.8 million budget for the 2018-19 financial year. The spending plan, which is mainly funded by a tax on hotel and motel rooms in Clark County, earmarks around 64 percent of expenditures for advertising, marketing and special events, 17 percent for operations, including the Las Vegas Convention Center, 10 percent for community support and 9 percent for other expenses. • Las Vegas Sands is closing three restaurants at its Venetian and Palazzo resorts on the Las Vegas Strip after the 60 Minutes television new program recently aired new allegations of sexual misconduct against celebrity chef Mario Batali. B&B Hospitality Group, which operates the venues in partnership with Batali, announced the closings, slated for late July. B&B said it is severing the partnership. Batali is under criminal investigation in New York in connection with earlier accusations alleging inappropriate behavior by the restaurateur toward several women. • The Mohegan Sun will show off its new $80 million Earth Expo & Convention Center at a ribbon cutting next week. The 250,000 square foot Earth Expo has eight loading docks, 15 high-tech meeting rooms, a 20,000 SF ballroom, a 3,500 SF wrap-around terrace and 20,000 SFT of entertainment or dining space. It will support a multitude of trade shows and has already been booked past the end of next year. • The annual Business Awards of Macau will be hosted by SJM for the sixth consecutive year, organizers have announced. The event will take place in the grand ballroom of the Grand Lisboa Hotel on November 15. ● The 10^th St. Regis hotel will open in September in the Hengqin Shizimen Central Business District. The St. Regis Zhuhai is being developed by the state-owned Huafa Group and will offer 251 guest rooms, 34 suites, a spacious presidential suite, restaurants and a spa. ● Spending by visitors to Macau was up 22 percent in the first quarter, with most of it spent on shopping, according to figures from the Statistics and Census Service. The data, which doesn’t include gaming revenue, showed total spending was MOP16.4 billion (US$2.02 billion). ● A new aquapark has opened in southern China. Wet ‘n’ Wild Haikou, with more than 20 slides, wave pools and other attractions, debuted earlier this month in Haikou, the capital of Hainan Province. ● The new substation at the Grand Lisboa Palace in Cotai is up and providing energy to the facilities. Companhia de Electricidade de Macau says 61 percent of its investments for 2018 have been earmarked for transmission and distribution networks; among the main projects is a MOP770 million (US$95.4 million) connection between Macau and China to be developed in Taipa. ● The Macao Government Tourism Office has not received any application for a new license for the Beijing Imperial Palace Hotel, which closed last year. A recent report indicated that Alvin Chau Cheok Wa, head of Macau junket investor Suncity Group, would take over the property and revamp it. ● A total of 157 people in Macau registered with the Central Registry System of Individuals with Gambling Disorders in 2017, up 11.3 percent from the previous year. According to the city’s Social Welfare Bureau, more than 10 percent of registered problem gamblers works as a dealer in the city’s casinos, and more than 30 percent had debts of MOP250,000 (US$30,939) or more. ● MGM China has organized career study tours of MGM Cotai for more than 150 students from Macau University of Science and Technology, University of Saint Joseph and Gabinete Coordenador Dos Serviços Sociais Sheng Kung Hui Macau. The tours are designed to introduce students to careers in the hospitality industry. ● Tourist satisfaction with Macau’s casinos rose by 3 percentage points quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of 2018, according to data released by the city’s Statistics and Census Service. The sub-index increased to 78.4 percent in the three months that ended March 31, compared to 75.4 percent in the fourth quarter last year. ● Macau Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak says police “cracked down” on gaming-related crimes and conducted 12 sting operations in the first quarter. Any crime is considered gaming-related when it takes place inside a casino or its surroundings; such crimes decreased 9.4 percent year-on-year in the quarter.