Oh, keep your shirt on… Strip Monopoly refers to that famed Parker Brothers board game (now owned by the soulless Hasbro, alas) as played with the real-life real estate on Las Vegas Boulevard — a/k/a “The Strip.”
Earlier this week, Kirk Kerkorian’s MGM Mirage acquired 33.4 acres of Strip-front real estate surrounding the company’s Circus-Circus property. This brings the Circus-Circus site, already 68-acres huge, to over 100 acres of land fronting on one of the priciest streets in the history of pricey streets.
MGM Mirage is already building the $7 billion Project City Center on and around the old Boardwalk property — apposite appellation strictly coincidental. The company plans a similar city-within-a-giant-casino development on the Circus-Circus site.
Vegas Today and Tomorrow has a nice Monopoly map to show you who is winning the game. Here’s a way of thinking of things: The green spots on the board are split between Wynn Las Vegas and The Venetian. Harrah’s owns the orange and the yellow properties. The railroads and utilities are divided among Boyd Gaming, Station Casinos and various minor players. Everything else belongs to MGM Mirage.
Harrah’s is technically the largest gaming company on earth, but MGM Mirage owns more undeveloped Strip-fronting real estate than Harrah’s owns in developed land on the Strip. All three of the companies that merged to form MGM Mirage — MGM Grand, Mirage Resorts and Mandalay Resort Group — have been persistently greedy in acquiring land on Las Vegas Boulevard over the years.
Circus-Circus was built by the man who may have understood Las Vegas best, Jay Sarno. He also built Caesar’s Palace, thereby inventing the idea of the themed casino-resort-hotel. Caesar’s, of course, has become almost a city unto itself, and it was the success of the Forum Shops that led other Strip casino operators to explore the convergence of gaming and shopping. MGM Mirage pledges to refurbish Circus-Circus as part of its development of the newly-assembled 100 acre parcel, so both of Sarno’s creations will live on in the city he influenced so decisively.
But what’s next for Strip Monopoly?
Other than Caesar’s Palace and The Paris, most of the Harrah’s Strip-front properties are fairly dowdy. The company is being courted by a private-equity fund, but, whoever ends up owning it, I think it may learn to love the smell of implosions in the morning. Harrah’s controls a great deal of land contiguous to its currently-operating resorts, so a spirited spate of creative destruction could put it on a much better footing in its competition with MGM Mirage.
For the other players, I look for more mergers and acquisitions. Boyd Gaming could grow to be a respectable third player in the game if it could acquire a similar-sized competitor. Station Casinos leaps to mind, but there might be ego battles, much as there were with Boyd’s acquisition of Coast Casinos. Steve Wynn has so much land available for development — an entire golf course — that he may have shuffled off The Strip before he completes his grand canvas. The Venetian’s Sheldon Adelson might have the chutzpah to make a run at the board, but his and the Culinary Union’s mutual animosity may have him land-locked on the grounds of the old Sands Resort.
It’s a fun game to watch, in any case. Over the next ten years, The Strip will change more radically than it ever has until now — which is saying something!
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