Reno hopes to hasten recovery

Tom Gardner

Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005 | 9:17 a.m.

RENO -- The Reno area is recovering more slowly from the double whammy of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the growth of Indian casinos than other parts of the state, and the tourism industry is working to woo back some of its former customers and to lure new ones, a gathering of gambling officials was told Wednesday.

"Reno has more dramatic problems than the other areas," said Bill Eadington, University of Nevada, Reno, economics professor and director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at UNR.

Richard Wells, president of Reno-based Wells Gaming Research, told the Northern Nevada Gaming Summit that there are 21 Indian casinos in Reno's primary feeder market.

"Those ... could well suppress Reno's revenue," he said.

Fifty-four tribal casinos in California took in $4.7 billion in 2003, the last year for which California statistics are available, Wells said. Nationwide, Indian gambling pulled in $18.5 billion in 2004, a 10 percent increase, according to a report issued last week.

Nevada casinos won a record $10.56 billion last year, up nearly 10 percent from 2003. But in the Reno area, Washoe County's take edged up just 1.5 percent last year to $1.03 billion after falling 2.4 percent in 2003.

Eadington and Wells said the Reno-Sparks area was showing slight improvement in tourism, including casino and hotel revenue, but more slowly than the state as a whole.

Casino executives told the gathering of about 100 industry officials that they were looking for new ways to market the area.

Phil DeLone, executive director of sales at Silver Legacy Resort Casino, said his hotel had linked up with the adjoining Circus Circus Hotel Casino and Eldorado Hotel-Casino and nearby Harrah's Reno Casino-Hotel to market the downtown area around the new Reno Events Center.

"The Reno Events Center is a home run" that will appeal to both the convention market and the entertainment market, DeLone said.

The center opened to a sellout crowd for Larry the Cable Guy. "Seventy (percent) to 75 percent of the tickets went to people over the hill in California," he said.

The effort by the four downtown properties should allow them to bring in bigger acts than what one hotel-casino could afford, he said.

Don Marradino, senior vice president of Harrah's Northern Nevada, which includes the Harrah's properties in Reno and at Lake Tahoe and Harveys Resort Hotel-Casino at the lake, said he was appealing to a younger crowd by signing artists like Toby Keith and Sammy Hagar and opening Hagar's Cabo Wabo Cantina at Harveys.

"It's a segment of people you can make money from without alienating the core crowd," he said.

Stephen Ascuaga, executive vice president of marketing at John Ascuaga's Nugget in Sparks, said the Nugget's Amateur Golf Challenge last year was successful as an event and in attracting new visitors.

Participants came from all 50 states and the event produced 2,000-2,500 room nights over its five-day run, he said .

"We're trying to break the image of what the Reno area is. That's the way we're taking the battle," he said. "At some point, we've got to get over the Indian gaming issue."

Except for the expected expansion of Casino San Pablo in the San Francisco Bay Area, Eadington said the growth of Indian casinos might be slowing, partly because of changing attitudes among Californians.

"There may be a NIMBY issue at work -- I don't want tribal casinos in my back yard, a concern about neighborhood casinos are too close, a concern about traffic on I-80, a concern about their neighbors gambling too much.

"We're more likely to see some degree of stability coming to California," he said.