Las Vegas’ Lucky Dragon Hotel & Casino has shut down its gaming and restaurant operations just a year after the Asian-themed property debuted with considerable hoopla and what was supposed to be a can’t-miss strategy as the city’s first casino aimed squarely at one of the industry’s most lucrative demographics.
The closures―which come six weeks before the traditional Lunar New Year celebrations bring thousands of Chinese and other Asian visitors to Las Vegas―were characterized in a Thursday tweet from management as the “beginning” of a “process of reorganization” and are “temporary.”
Officials with the property said in a statement said they expect that process will take around six months. In the meantime, the 200-room hotel and gift shop “will remain fully operational.”
“While this is a difficult decision,” the statement read, “this reorganization paves the way for Lucky Dragon to establish new partnerships that will enhance the property’s long-term positioning and provide a better guest experience.”
Hopes ran high when Lucky Dragon opened in December 2016 on Sahara Avenue just west of the Strip. Backed with $60 million from Chinese investors pursuing green cards under the U.S. government’s EB-5 visa program, it was the first casino in Las Vegas built from the ground up since 2010’s Cosmopolitan―and it was decidedly different from every tourism-focused resort in town: a boutique offering with a comparatively modest 27,000-square-foot gaming floor and only 300 or so machine games and around 30 live tables.
Its most significant departure, though, from its larger competitors was its ethnic focus. Signage was in Chinese first and English second, table games were heavily weighted toward baccarat, food and décor were designed accordingly, even down to the elimination of the number “4” as a floor button in the hotel elevators. (The word for “four” sounds like the word for “death” in Mandarin and is considered unlucky.)
But the gamblers never materialized, and as a stand-alone casino competing with deep-pocketed multi-property, multi-market rivals it soon ran into difficulties. Just a few months after opening, a restaurant was taken off line and about 100 people laid off, including the general manager, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In December, the Review-Journal reported the property was in worse financial straits and had cut more staff.
At that point, Lucky Dragon had more than 500 full-time and part-time employees. In Thursday’s statement, management didn’t say how many would be losing their jobs, only that laid-off staff “will have the opportunity to rejoin the team when gaming and restaurant operations resume.”
