Barbary Coast owner buys Nevada Power land

By Liz Benston (contact)

Thursday, Jan. 23, 2003 | 11:08 a.m.

Coast Casinos Inc. has purchased for $20.7 million a small parcel next to the company's Barbary Coast casino from Nevada Power Co., one of the few land transactions to be consummated right next to the Las Vegas Strip in recent years.

But the 2.5-acre parcel -- a stone's throw from one of the country's busiest intersections and the home of the Barbary Coast, Bally's, Bellagio and Caesars Palace resorts -- won't be developed into a casino anytime soon, a Coast executive said.

For the past 15 or so years, the company has leased the Flamingo Road land from Nevada Power for use as a surface parking lot for employees. That won't change after the sale, Coast Casinos President Harlan Braaten said.

"Nevada Power wanted to sell the land, we wanted to keep the land as part of the property, so we bought it," he said.

The $21 million pricetag is hefty, he acknowledged.

"It's an expensive parking lot."

Still, land prices on and near the Strip are difficult to quantify, he said.

"The way land prices have skyrocketed on the Strip, 10 years from now, it may be pretty inexpensive. I remember when land was got on the Strip for less than $1 million an acre and now it's going for $10 to $15 million an acre."

The lot is adjacent to the Barbary Coast's customer parking garage and is big enough to handle parking for the property's roughly 800 shift employees.

Nevada Power acquired the land in 1935 as a part of a power transmission right-of-way.

The utility first put up the land for sale last summer "to generate cash from an asset not required for our core business," Nevada Power spokesman Edgar Patino said.

The sale isn't related to the utility's financial troubles and is part of an ongoing strategy to periodically sell off land it owns across the Las Vegas Valley, he said.

Coast was only one of several interested buyers, Patino said, declining to reveal the companies.

"We unofficially receive unsolicited inquires all the time, on a regular basis, on land that we own."

The money generated by the sale will flow back to ratepayers as required by a regulatory process established by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada, he said.

Park Place Entertainment Corp., which owns Bally's and Caesars Palace resorts across the street in two directions from the Barbary Coast, declined to comment on the sale.

Braaten said he did not know whether Park Place was interested in the land.

Coast Casinos' decision to buy the parcel will keep out potential competitors and is a sign that the company is not interested in selling the Barbary Coast, a casino industry observer said.

The Barbary Coast opened in 1979 and sits on 1.8 acres of land.