Nevada’s Station Casinos has petitioned the city of North Las Vegas for a second one-year suspension of non-restricted gaming and liquor licenses at two of its properties, Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho. The request seems a clear indicator that Station has no plans to reopen the casinos anytime soon.
The two casinos closed March 17, 2020, and rumors went around last year that they would be demolished, along with the Fiesta Henderson.
According to Newsbreak.com, in a May 13 conference call with JP Morgan analysts, Station CEO Frank Fertitta III, Vice Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta and CFO Stephen Cootey said they would move ahead with their long-planned Durango Station in the Las Vegas Valley, with groundbreaking in the first quarter of 2022. The budget for the property with a 1,000-room hotel and 120,000 square feet of gaming space, is estimated at $400 million to $500 million.
That’s far less than Station’s budgets for the Red Rock Resort ($925 million) and the Palms ($662 million), which the company recently sold to California’s San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. Station clearly thinks it will be money well spent, as Durango Station is located in an area with a high Asian-American population and no real competition within five miles. Also, the population density in the three-mile radius around Durango Station would be higher than that for Red Rock Resort.
With those factors in mind, JP Morgan Joseph Greff projected a 15 percent to 20 percent return on investment for Durango Station.
Frank Fertitta III, chairman and CEO of Station parent company Red Rock Resorts, told analysts on a first-quarter earnings call that the location, along Durango Drive just south of the 215 Beltway, will see a groundbreaking for a hotel-casino early next year.
Fertitta said the plan is finally going forward because of the end of the pandemic and the fact that the 71-acre parcel is located in one of the fastest-growing areas of the Las Vegas Valley. “Go do demographics around every local casino site in Las Vegas, and you’ll see that Durango is an absolute no-brainer,” Fertitta said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The company acquired the property in 2000, and according to the newspaper report, a site plan revealed in 2008 reveals a plan for two hotel towers, a casino, a movie theater and several retail offerings. Plans to tackle the project the following year were scrapped as the Las Vegas real estate market and the economy in general reeled from the Great Recession.
For now, the Palms Casino Resort remains shuttered, pending its sale to the San Manuel Band.
