Las Vegas-style yard sale under way at El Rancho

David Strow

Thursday, June 1, 2000 | 10:02 a.m.

Call it the Las Vegas version of a yard sale.

Just months away from demolition, the entire contents of the El Rancho hotel-casino are being offered for sale to the public over the next 45 days.

Organizers expect to gross as much as $700,000 from the sale of everything from television sets from the El Rancho's 600 rooms to full-size horse replicas going for $750 each.

"It used to be that they'd just tear down the buildings and didn't salvage anything," said Michael Kabealo, vice president of National Content Liquidators Inc., the company handling the sale.

That isn't the case now. Kabealo, who handled the liquidation of the contents of the Aladdin and the Dunes, expects "99 percent of this to be gone" when the sale wraps up in 45 days.

About the only thing that won't be for sale is gaming equipment, which was removed by former El Rancho owner International Thoroughbred Breeders prior to the sale to Turnberry Associates.

The country-western themed El Rancho, closed eight years ago, was purchased just weeks ago by Turnberry, a Florida company developing a high-rise luxury condominium project on Paradise Road. Turnberry executives have said they want to demolish the deteriorating El Rancho by this fall, though they're not decided on what they want to do with the land. The sale price was $42 million.

The El Rancho opened in the late 1940s as the Thunderbird, one of the Strip's first resort casinos, and was renamed the El Rancho in 1982. Owner Ed Torres closed the property in 1992 after continuing losses, and it never again opened.

Literally anything that can be removed from the El Rancho will be available for sale, including chairs (starting at $12), slot machine signs ($145 and up), an elk's head ($675) and a still functional 52-lane bowling alley system ($114,000).

"That (the bowling alley) was installed four years before it closed, so it only has four years of use," Kabealo said.

Though Kabealo expects keen interest from Las Vegas nostalgia seekers and bargain hunters, he also expects interest from business owners too.

"It's an opportunity to buy equipment at a reasonable price," Kabealo said. "Someone starting a restaurant can come in, save tens of thousands (of dollars) buying equipment."

For those bargain-hunters, it will be the first peek inside the historic property since its 1992 closure. Though the lobby has been cleaned up to a great extent, the wear of many years is apparent in the decaying dance hall ceiling, the buckled floors and broken windows of the sports book, and abandoned pins and bowling balls sitting at the end of the El Rancho's bowling lanes.

That created a challenge for NCL that it didn't face with the Aladdin or the Dunes -- trying to clean out eight years of disrepair and dust in the two weeks before the sale.

"We had to do tons of clean-up," Kabealo said.

The sale begins today at the El Rancho, located across the street from Circus Circus on the Strip. Hours of operation are Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. The sale will continue for 45 days.