What are Station Casinos plans for development in Las Vegas after opening Durango?
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Station Casinos wants to double its presence in Southern Nevada in the next 10 years, but the company says it hasn’t decided what it will build after Durango.
“With six future development sites all in high net worth, high-growth areas of the valley, all conveniently located around the (215 Beltway), much like Durango, we think we have the best development pipeline in the gaming industry,” Scott Kreeger, president of Red Rock Resorts, Station Casinos’ parent company, said in a recent interview. “We’re excited to take a 10-year journey into the future and develop these six sites when the time is right.”
Red Rock Resorts is first focusing on opening the $780 million Durango casino-resort and making sure it is running smoothly over the next few months before the company starts construction on one of six new projects. Kreeger said Station Casinos is currently working to get all its land entitlements for its upcoming projects approved in the next year.
Some developments have more potential than others such as an expansion of Durango and Inspirada in Henderson, he said.
The Inspirada project is similar to Durango, Kreeger said, and“we feel like it’s in an area where we can go in and do what we do serving locals and creating kind of centers for neighborhood entertainment.”
Inspirada is proposed to have 201 rooms and 58,000 square feet of casino space. It’s a little smaller than Durango which is by design since Station Casinos doesn’t want to build properties that can’t be supported by their surrounding neighborhoods, Kreeger said.
“Every time we build a new project, we try to raise the bar, we try to make it as relevant for the day, and as appealing as possible to the neighborhoods,” Kreeger said. “We would look at the capacity of the neighborhood and size of the project to fit with the neighborhood that it’s going into, that might mean that in some situations, it has a smaller set of offerings than others. But we plan all of our projects to eventually be a size and a scale of Durango or Red Rock, a large-scale regional resort destination.” ‘
How quickly Station Casinos moves forward with construction on either project will depend on market conditions, which are currently less than friendly because of high demand for construction labor and high interest rates, Kreeger said.
Land sales
Besides buying and developing property in recent years, Station Casinos has also closed three properties, two in North Las Vegas and one in Henderson, and sold off the land for these properties. It sold the Fiesta Henderson site for $32 million and the Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho site for $59 million.
Kreeger said the company doesn’t have plans to close other properties.
“We think that the properties that we own right now are very competitive in the market and offer our guests very relevant and fresh offerings,” he said. “So the idea is to continue to invest in these key locations that we have existing while we do our roadmap of new opportunities across the valley.”
But the company does have some land for sale, just under 100 acres at its Viva site next to Tropicana Avenue and Interstate 15, where the now-closed Wild West Casino was located.
“There are not very many parcels of that size that are gaming entitled, left in the city, so it’s a very strategic piece of land,” Kreeger said.
Nearly 50 acres of the Viva site was slated to be sold earlier this year for the new Oakland Athletics baseball stadium, but but that deal didn’t go through and the stadium location was moved to where the Tropicana hotel currently stands.
Kreeger said there is an “internal plan” to possibly build a Stations property on the Viva site, but the main focus is to sell the land. He said the company will consider selling the land as a whole or in chunks.
“As we get inbound interest, we consider it on a case-by-case basis, but I don’t think there’s any scenario that we’re against,” Kreeger said.
Station Casinos is also keeping an eye out for potential property around Las Vegas that could be suitable for purchase.
“We look at potential expansions of master plans and city expansions that would be suitable for an investment all the time,” Kreeger said.
