Port authority approves sale of Missouri’s Flamingo Hilton Casino

Tuesday, May 16, 2000 | 8:38 a.m.

The approval, announced Monday, does not give ownership of the downtown casino to Isle yet. The Missouri Gaming Commission has to approve the sale at its meeting in Kansas City May 31. If that happens, Isle could own the casino on June 5.

Under the new ownership, Dave Miller, Hilton's acting general manager, would become the daily operations chief under Isle general manager-designate Dan Weindruch, a certified public accountant, who now is the corporate director of finance properties in Biloxi, Miss.

Monday's approval also ratified Isle's takeover of Hilton's riverfront land lease with Kansas City.

But Hilton Hotels Corp. of Beverly Hills, Calif. cannot just walk away from the project.

Matthew V. Webster, of Fahnestock & Co. Inc., the port authority's financial consultant, said for about seven years Hilton will be the principal guarantor of $21 million in bonds sold by the authority to finance construction of Richard L. Berkley Riverfront Park next to the casino site.

Isle would make those payments, Webster said, but Hilton would be required to step in if there was a default.

If the sale of the casino is approved, a $15 million makeover would begin. The makeover would change the hot pink and purple boat into a traditional 19th century riverboat.

"Practically every light you see on that boat will be taken off," said Edward J. Ortmann, executive vice president of the Kuhlmann Design Group Inc. of St. Louis, which is remodeling the vessel.

According to floor plans made public on Monday, inside the casino would be transformed into Isle's trademark Caribbean village motif, including a large waterfall in the middle of the gaming floor.

The makeover would make the Isle casino identical in decor and operations with Isle's 10 operating casinos in the United States and two other casinos that are being worked on in Boonville, Mo. and Las Vegas.

The casino would remain open during the remodeling and all 800 employees would be guaranteed a job, Isle officials said.

After the remodeling, an official "opening" of the boat as an Isle of Capri casino would come sometime in September.

The deal reinforces an unfulfilled agreement by Hilton to recruit minorities as investors in 10 percent of the local holding company that owns the casino. It also renews goals for hiring minorities and women and buying goods and services from firms they own.

Webster said the company increased its stock value about 300 percent last year and 400 percent over the past three years.

Isle ranks as the eighth-largest gaming company in the United States and has other casinos in Mississippi, Louisiana, Colorado and Iowa, a racetrack in Florida and a gambling cruise ship that docks in New Orleans.