Gaming briefs for August 1, 2003

Friday, Aug. 1, 2003 | 11:13 a.m.

Casino sale completed

TLC Casino Enterprises said Thursday it completed the acquisition of 100 percent of stock in Four Queens Inc., which operates the Four Queens hotel in downtown Las Vegas.

"We are very pleased with how well this deal has been handled," Terry Caudill, principal of TLC Casino Enterprises, said in a statement released by Lionel Sawyer & Collins, the Las Vegas law firm that assisted Caudill with his casino license and loan transaction.

Caudill owns the Magoo's poker bar chain and other bar-restaurants in Las Vegas. In May he announced his agreement to buy the property for $20.5 million from New York-based Elsinore Corp.

Caudill has said he plans few cosmetic changes to the property and expects to keep all of its employees.

A similar deal to buy the casino fell through last summer amid Elsinore's negotiations with Culinary Union workers.

Controversial hotel planned

NEW ORLEANS -- Harrah's New Orleans Casino wants to build a 450-room hotel behind its parking garage, a plan that would require the demolition of four historically significant 19th-century buildings.

The casino will submit demolition plans Monday to the Historic District Landmarks Commission, which is scheduled to take up the matter Sept. 4. The casino must get a series of approvals from the city and from its parent company in Las Vegas, Harrah's Entertainment Inc.

Permission to have its own hotel, along with a gambling tax cut, was part of the casino's bailout plan that was approved by the Legislature in 2001. Currently, the casino puts its out-of-town guests in area hotels and foots the bill.

If approved, the $100 million hotel would open in 2006, said Harrah's General Manager John Payne.

"We want to make this an attraction for regional and national customers. Our company is very bullish on New Orleans," Payne said.

While the mayor's office is supportive of the plan, the destruction of the historic buildings may bring opposition to the project from activists and competing hotel and motel operators.

"I'm deeply concerned any time there is a wholesale discarding of 19th-century architecture," said Camille Strachan, a community activist and trustee emeritus for the National Trust of Historic Preservation.

Strachan said the destruction of the buildings could become "a poison pill" to the tourism industry.

"Don't expect tourists to come here looking for some kind of new hotel architecture," she said.