April 1 target for opening Horseshoe

Tuesday, March 2, 2004 | 10:58 a.m.

If Harrah's Entertainment executives get their way, the sale of Binion's Horseshoe will take place Thursday and they'll begin next week interviewing workers from the 52-year-old property who want to return to work.

Wednesday's special regulatory meetings of the Gaming Control Board and the Nevada Gaming Commission are expected to allow the sale of the landmark hotel-casino, an approval that Harrah's expects would allow the casino to reopen by April 1.

An estimated 900 people were employed at the property when it closed in January.

"Assuming we get Gaming Control Board and Nevada Gaming Commission approval and permission to close on the deal on Thursday, we'll begin interviewing Horseshoe employees on March 9," Harrah's spokesman Gary Thompson said Monday.

The Horseshoe's conga line of creditors won't have long to wait either, he said.

"We'll begin to cut checks to creditors on Thursday as well," Thompson said, providing the deal is approved by regulators.

The proposed transaction would have West Virginia-based racetrack operator MTR Gaming Group acquire the property in a complicated three-way deal with Harrah's and current owner Becky Binion Behnen, who was unable or unwilling to replenish the casino's bankroll after U.S. marshals entered the property Jan. 9 and seized an estimated $1 million for the Culinary Union's health and pension funds.

Harrah's would acquire Behnen's intellectual property rights to the Horseshoe brand name in Nevada as well as to the World Series of Poker, and would manage the property for MTR for at least one year, with two additional one-year options.

MTR would pay an estimated $20 million for the casino-hotel, which would eventually lose the Horseshoe name and be called, simply, "Binion's."

Behnen would lose the hotel-casino and its intellectual property, but would probably collect a couple million dollars above and beyond the almost $50 million in Horseshoe debts Harrah's and MTR have agreed to pay in full.

Ongoing negotiations with the seven landlords who own the land underneath the hotel-casino and its parking garages are not expected to scuttle the deal.