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StumbleJockey Club can teach its giant neighbors some economic lessons
Friday, Aug. 12, 2011 | 2 a.m.
The Jockey Club, a timeshare/condominium property nestled between the Cosmopolitan and CityCenter, isn’t quite as shiny and new as its neighbors.
Jockey Club
Beyond the Sun
View from the Jockey Club
The room was booked over the phone because the website couldn’t handle a same-day reservation. Valet parking cost $20 because the attendant couldn’t break a $5 bill and, yes, they actually charge. Our belongings were dragged through a Byzantine maze of non-ADA-compliant steps and hallways to get to the bank of elevators that take guests to their rooms.
And that’s when the adventure really began.
“Our guest elevators are under repair. Please use the service elevator,” the lime-green sign announced. “We apologize for any inconvenience.”
And so, around the corner I went to line up for the tiny service elevator, which couldn’t hold more than a couple of people and their luggage. But it was worth the wait, if only because it delayed my arrival in a spacious but sad one-bedroom suite with red dotted carpet, a paisley couch and one of those thick, maroon motel-room bedspreads that you just know is a Petri dish for germs. Also, the stale air was a bouquet of hard-to-identify aromas, one of which was most certainly Marlboro despite the fact that the place claims to be nonsmoking.
“Oh man,” I tweeted. “The staycation from hell well under way. The elevators are busted, the room smells like rotted pumpkin.”
A few minutes later, my partner, Miles, texted a private response: “Seriously? Why do we have to stay there, again?”
Because I had always wanted to. But that was kind of a lie. In fact, it never occurred to me to have anything at all to do with the Jockey Club until about four years ago when those two squat, chalk-colored boxes of time shares began to be swallowed up by New Vegas in an epic way. The Bellagio emerged to the north in the 1990s, but that had merely replaced the Dunes. Otherwise, the place remained largely unmolested by progress until the skyscrapers of CityCenter and Cosmopolitan began crowding around it like concrete-and-glass bullies.
Yet there was more to this than idle fascination. I had come to believe that the odd eyesore that is the Jockey Club, seated amid all that opulence, was a significant symbol of what would someday prove to be the gravest problem with CityCenter and several other developments along the Strip. The Jockey Club is a decayed anachronism, but it is also as forever as a diamond.
There are 14,000 different time-share owners and about six dozen full-share owners at 3700 Las Vegas Blvd. South, a nice, round number of an address that denotes its seniority. That population guarantees the Jockey Club will never be bought out or redeveloped in any meaningful way.
•••
Forney Smith and his business associates had this nifty idea in 1972 that what the Strip needed were apartment buildings to house all those thousands of casino employees. It was a Nixon-era version of what we now know as New Urbanism, a notion that there’s virtue and/or utility in dense development where residents can “live, work and play,” as the wonks intone. Smith built Jockey Club to deploy a primitive version of this concept, and he discovered pretty fast that with a few precious exceptions — New York chief among them — the idea fails because, to hear Smith tell it, “Little did I know, you don’t live where you work.”
A view of the narrow sidewalk where Jockey Club and Cosmopolitan visitors can take their dogs.
The Jockey Club was born as only the third condominium project in the state, but buyers began asking Smith to establish a rental program immediately after closing on their units. (They started at $24,000 then, or about $124,000 today, adjusted for inflation.) The people who had bought the units had, by and large, no intention of residing there, nor were they Strip employees shortening their commutes. They were flippers.
“From 1974 to 1977, we operated basically like a hotel,” Smith said. Caesars Palace or the Las Vegas Convention Center would rely on the 348-unit place as a primo location for room blocks during peak events. “People didn’t live there.”
In 1977, the developers took back the last 20 units, which hadn’t been closed on, and tried out a newfangled business model never attempted in Nevada: The time share. Folks could buy a particular week in a particular unit and then pay a yearly maintenance fee that generally amounted to a fraction of what a traditional hotel room for a week might cost. In those days, the time-share industry wasn’t quite so efficiently international — nowadays, properties are often part of large networks where owners can exchange their time in one location for time in other destinations — but the idea caught on, and there are now more than 200,000 time-share units in Las Vegas.
It took until 1993 for the Jockey Club to sell out every last week (each unit in a time-share represents 52 weeks for sale), in part because buying the condos back from the owners was an incremental process. And there remain 78 full owners, a handful of whom actually live there.
Of course, there’s still a rental program. Weeks go unused, so vacationers like me can hop online or call up and book rooms like we would at any other hotel in the city. Which is how I found myself acclimating to the gruesome stench of my seventh-floor suite while gazing out at a surprisingly decent view of the corner of Flamingo and the Strip.
•••
I actually began working on this story more than 18 months ago, in the weeks after CityCenter opened and Cosmo loomed as the Next Big Thing. But Smith, a gruff and defensive fellow with a hippie-esque untamed white beard who rules this fiefdom into his ninth decade, hung up on me back then. Just before he did so, he told me I would have to wait until after Cosmopolitan opened to write about the Jockey Club.
A number of parking spaces in the garage at the Cosmopolitan are dedicated to Jockey Club guests.
Of course, I didn’t have to, but I did anyway. The Cosmo wouldn’t even exist had Smith and his partner not sold off a chunk of their Strip-fronted property to other developers who were supposed to open a casino. Gaming chips were made, too, for the Jockey Club Casino, but the project failed before it began, and a few years later the original Cosmo developers took over. Those never-deployed gaming chips, by the way, are still for sale on eBay.
Officially, both sides of the weird Cosmo-Jockey Club relationship are all smiles. Theoretically, the Jockey Club is a sort of crazy-uncle-in-the-attic to hip, lush Cosmo — attached by a set of elevators hidden in a nook of the casino to which even many Cosmo employees have difficulty providing directions.
Cosmo CEO John Unwin, in a preopening interview, told me they welcome their neighbors to partake in the new resort’s offerings, including access to their sparkly rooftop pools. During construction, Cosmo paid for a valet service to park Jockey Club guests’ cars at Planet Hollywood because they took over the time-share’s longtime surface parking, and now that it’s open, there’s a large expanse of choice parking spaces in Cosmo’s garage dedicated to Jockey Club guests. Attendants are serious about enforcing that, too; I was chased down at a Cosmo garage elevator by one who forced me to move my car when I had accidentally put it in a Jockey Club space.
And Smith feels that Cosmo provides many things he, as a developer, failed to deliver: “They gave us amenities that we have needed and longed for the 30-some years we’ve been here. We had promised to build another tower and put restaurants and stuff like that in. We couldn’t give them that, but now with the Cosmopolitan, they have everything they want.”
John Unwin
Yet there’s clearly more to it. The Jockey Club’s swimming pool was once an open-air space, but sunbathers there are liable to earn checkerboard tans thanks to netting that serves as a ceiling. It was put in place to shield pool-users from construction debris and remains because Cosmo guests occasionally drop stuff from the open-air balconies. At night, it is lit up with a lattice of light bulbs that give it a vaguely California backyard feel, but the terrace has become the sole smoking area for Jockey Club guests not brazen enough to pollute their rooms as well as a path between the property and elevators that lead to both the parking garage and Cosmo’s casino.
In January, when we stayed at the then-brand new Cosmo with our dogs, Black, Jack and Aces, more than one employee offered this helpful tip for taking our dogs to do their business: Go to a concrete alley just north of the Jockey Club pool. Ouch.
It’s not that the Jockey Club is a totally miserable place to stay. There are some rather charming aspects to it, not the least of which is the price. It cost us about $80 for a same-day reservation on a mid-July night when Cosmo was charging $210, Bellagio was $169, Aria was $129, Vdara was $109 and Paris Las Vegas, Bally’s and Planet Hollywood were sold out.
That’s a steal, and it includes use of a vast, free DVD lending library, free popcorn and a well-stocked convenience store open until 11 p.m. There are shuttles to proper grocery stores every other day or so, too, and free movie nights. Each unit has a fully equipped kitchen and, if you can look past Bellagio’s parking garage, it’s quite a view of sunrise after a fitful night on that spongy excuse for a bed. The staff is superfriendly and helpful without being touchy-feely. And far from being a haven for geezers, as I expected, there was a diverse array of large families, many of whom are second- or third-generation owners who inherited their time shares.
A netting covers the pool at the Jockey Club, as patrons at the Cosmopolitan pool have been known to throw the occasional item off the ledge.
But this version of a hotel is nothing like the opulence that surrounds it. The Jockey Club is undergoing its once-a-decade renovations right now, so I asked Smith what it would be like when that was over. He asked again which unit I had stayed in, then told me that room had already been redone.
“Didn’t it look new?” he said, earning a confused, blank look from me. “Well, if you didn’t see what it looked like before, you wouldn’t know.”
As luck would have it, the week we stayed at the Jockey Club coincided with the Jockey Club’s time share and condo board meetings. Signs throughout the complex invited owners and guests to attend, so I went to one. Later, I’d be accused of being sneaky, but it was a publicly posted meeting and I was a paying guest of the hotel.
It was a typically stuffy affair, the standard-issue subjects of every HOA board. There were discussions about costs of various purchases and, as usual, the blather of one or two self-important jerks kvetching over such minutiae as whether so-and-so was properly identified in last month’s minutes.
Yet I was roused from my stupor by one discussion in particular over how to address various complaints about the Cosmo. Much of it was mundane — exposed drain pipes and wiring — but also, Cosmo had decided not to make good on a promise to beautify and light the narrow sidewalk that Jockey Club visitors use to get to the Strip.
“I have been out here many times at night, and ladies are not going to walk down that walkway,” one board member said. “They don’t. If you come here at night, you’ll see everybody walks right down this road (rather than the designated sidewalk). Now, in my opinion, if people are careful, it is OK. It is the only alternative we have.”
That’s the problem, you see, of getting boxed in. Smith indicated at the meeting that little could be done. He had no comment about it in our interview a week later, and Cosmopolitan also did not have a comment.
•••
Assuming the Cosmo is a net positive — and most Jockey Club guests seem to think it is, give or take the navigational challenges and how hard it has become to fight Strip auto traffic — it doesn’t quite deliver the “everything they want” that Smith said.
That is, if what “they” want is to sell out, as Paula Edens of Salt Lake City does. Her mother bought their share in the 1970s for $13,000, and the descendants are on the hook for $621 a year in maintenance fees. Edens insisted that about four years ago, a “voting sheet” was sent to owners asking about interest in selling out to the Cosmo, but some entrenched condo owners refused to budge and the deal was lost. “They were going to pay a fairly hefty price, and now the value has plummeted. That made it so all the rest of us could not sell our interest of it.”
Smith disputes that such a thing ever happened: “We can’t even get 14,000 people to respond to anything. There’s no way in heck we could ever get 14,000 owners to agree to sell. That was a question every year at the owner meeting when Steve Wynn owned the Bellagio. Every year, somebody would pop up and say, ‘When is Steve Wynn going to buy us out?’”
Daredevil Robbie Knievel jumps 130 feet through the air in a rooftop-to-rooftop jump between the 16-story twin hotel towers of the Jockey Club Thursday, Feb. 4, 1999. The stunt, called "Robbie Knievel Building-to-Building Death Jump Live," was televised by the FOX network. The distance was not a record but the run-up room and landing room was short - only 220 feet to get up to speed and 220 feet to stop on the other side.
In fact, Wynn never tried, even as what was then Mirage Resorts acquired the rest of the neighborhood, said Alan Feldman, vice president of MGM Resorts, who was a spokesman for Wynn in the 1990s. “You would actually have to buy every share,” Feldman said. “It isn’t impossible, but it’s very involved. The process wasn’t considered worth it.”
And therein is the conundrum. As much as journalists, historians and nostalgists complain about the ephemeral and historically disrespectful nature of the Strip, that constant change is the secret to the destination’s success. The ability to take a canvas, wipe it clean and dream anew has long been the engine that has demanded the world’s repeat visitation. We may presently be in a prolonged slump — and the newer properties may have been built to last longer than a few decades — but at some point, someone will want to re-envision what’s there today, as unthinkable as it may seem. The folks from Controlled Demolition Inc., the company that has executed every major resort demolition, once told me they have preliminary plans ready to go for the implosion of almost every casino on the Strip.
But not the Jockey Club. No matter how out of place it may be, no matter how decrepit it ever gets, it is an unmovable object. And so, too, are all these now-beautiful condo-hotel projects that account for thousands of individual owners who would need to be persuaded to sell.
“We don’t mind,” Smith said of being surrounded, crowded or sneered upon for not having the beauty or modernism of the Jockey Club’s neighbors. “We’re not going anywhere.”
A longer version of this story originally appeared in Las Vegas Weekly, a sister publication of the Sun.
Discussion: 8 comments so far…
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The place is a dive but this is still a free country and as long the owner complies with all health laws (including ADA compliance) he is good to go. I know a friend who was going to stay there and when he stay the condition of the place went to the Paris. He lost his deposit but did not care.
Why not transfer all property rights to the "Harmon". Then the lovely can at least be redone, and the Harmon will have a "start" on an income.
free popcorn and wine in a paper bag. whats there not to love?
Gotta love the underdog.
....love Forney Smith!.....Jockey Club is lucky to have him......
"Valet parking cost $20 because the attendant couldn't break a $5 bill"
Well Duuhh, you we're scammed by the valet. Sure he could break the $20. He just tells that to everyone hoping that the "sucker" will let him keep the $20.
Remember when there were animatronic dinosaurs in there? I had at least one school field trip there.
I recall reading a few years ago that Margaret Elardi (Owner of the Frontier during the longest labor srike in American history and now, I believe, Casino Royale) was part of the ownership group that sold the surrounding land. Kinda wish they coulda left a little more room than, like 6 feet, between the south side of the Jockey Club and the Cosmopolitan Of Las Vegas.
Maybe in a few years TV prices will get low enough that they put 52 inch, Hi-def units in each room and pipe in camera views from the top of the Cosmopolitan, so the tenants can have a decent view.
$621 annual maintenance fees for a week of time share ownership? ($32,292 a year for each and every unit). For $621 (or less) you can stay for a week at many different strip hotel locations without the requirement to pay every year for life, and beyond. I'm sure it's good for some, but certainly not a very good investment. First you pay thousands for the unit, then you pay what equates to the cost of renting the room in maintenance fees? I'm sure the sales pitch does little to explain the true cost vs. simply renting a room for a week. Unfortunately, any serious upgrades (big TV's, new carpet or furniture, etc.) will simply have to have the cost paid for by the unit owners, resulting in an even higher fee.
That being said, I wish them all well. How many of the 14,000 weekly owners visit every year for their allotted week?
Wow, they really screwed up the initial sales contracts if there was no way to pay out recalcitrant owners if a large majority of the owners want to sell. Emminent domain will be the only way that place is ever going to go.
A time share is a bad investment all the way around, for what you pay on the mortgage and the maintenance, you can go to any hotel and not have the hassles.
On a side note, we had a T/S up on Flamingo road. When we bought it, an officer of the company gave us a 'deal' All the money we pay for the T/S at that location could be traded for the same size unit at the new Planet Hollywood which was in construction at the time. So when the time came that they sent us the documentation for the PH timeshare, my wife noticed that it said we couldn't use the pool. So she called them and they had to re-write the docs and send them out to everyone, then they decided they weren't going to honor the deal we made with them even though we had the agreement signed by the officer of the company, long story short, my wife threatened to sue, so they gave us back ALL the money we paid for 2 years. So in effect we stayed at our unit twice at no cost. Sometimes my wife is so smart.
Only sometimes though, she bought 3 houses here and a condo, and you all know how that worked out.
So now we're living here cause it's cheaper than living in NY. We rented our townhouse on Long Island and we're actually making a profit on it.
So far, the other 2 houses and the condo are rented and we don't have to put any money into them, time will tell though.
A couple of years ago I received an offer from my timeshare club to stay here so I thought I would check it out against my better judgment. Three days before my stay I received a letter from them saying that a number of people had contracted Legionnaires Disease while staying there.
I promptly cancelled my reservation and have had no morbid interest in seeing the place since. Airborne bacteria isn't my idea of a "staycation".
Polo Towers across the street may have a not-so-fancy facade but the units are really fabulous. The JC needs to be torn down. There's no excuse for its being so gross.
The Schlocky Club...
So the various T/S boxes, up and down the Strip -- 200,000 rooms worth -- are frozen in place, evermore. Hilton on The Strip isn't too bad, but others, like Planet Hollywood's, said Schlocky Club, and others are a stain on the skyline. Permanently.
Get on with the inevitable: Hang a Budget Suites sign on 'em, let the dope dealers and drifters move in. That's all they're good for and we have an abundance of such potential tenants in this Valley, thanks to the loser culture fostered here by our feckless civic "leaders."
WOW! Where should I start? The Jockey Club is rated a 3 star resort on every travel site that I just checked. While it sits in a hub of 4 and 5 star hotels, 3 aint too shabby! Also, while checking the rating, I checked prices for rooms on the central strip. I couldn't find anything for less than twice the price! Granted there were cheaper places to stay in Vegas, but not on the central strip. If you price by the square foot and in-room amenities, like a full kitchen, a living room, and (in many rooms) a second bath, the cost of the Jockey Club becomes a small fraction of what a similarly sized and featured suite would cost in the neighboring hotels on the central strip.
Which brings me to another key point that contrasts with your portrayal of the Jockey Club. You criticize it's maze like hallways. That is just being petty because there is no practical significance to that fact. I would wager that compared to any other hotel, the time it takes for you to walk from your room to the sidewalk of the strip is less... maybe a total of 3 minutes, compared to getting lost in the attempt at the typical mega hotel. In fact the time it takes at the Jockey Club is a fraction of the time from the average hotel room on the strip, even if you don't get lost along the way at the mega hotel. That is one of my favorite features offered at the Jockey Club... convenience! You are right smack dab in the middle of the strip!
Addressing a couple of your legitimate issues... First, how much could it possibly cost to put in a few more lights along the sidewalk to the strip. If the Cosmo won't pay for it, then the board should. Secondly, there has been chatter about enclosing the pool. Although it isn't desirable during half the year, it would be the other half... in my opinion. The Cosmo would be wise to pay for it, too, considering a law suit from a potential victim of something dangerous being tossed out of one of the Cosmo rooms and landing on their head wouldn't be cheap for the Cosmo.
In summary, the Jockey Club is far, far cheaper than a similarly sized suite and unsurpassed in convenience to the strip.
By the way, how much does the average hotel room with a full and close-up view of the Bellagio Fountains cost? Hundreds! But not the dozens of Jockey Club rooms that have such a view! They are "no extra charge".
I am surprised that the original "live where you work" concept didn't fly down there. I would love to be able to skip the drive, and just walk to work. It must have been too pricey at the time.
Since gas has gotten so expensive, maybe this concept will get another chance.
I'll still take my $35-60 a night room at the IP any day!
I actually have one of those Jockey Club chips that I purchased off of Ebay years ago. I was wondering what happened to the casino that never opened there. Years later, I was amazed that the JC was still standing and wondering why they never sold to Cosmo. Anyway; nice article. Thank you.