Is Steve Wynn casino shopping in St. Louis?

20 April 2010

By Howard Stutz

ST. LOUIS, Missouri -- A one-paragraph blog item on the website of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last week detailed a visit to Pinnacle Entertainment's two properties in the market by Wynn Resorts Chairman Steve Wynn.

Wynn and an entourage toured the downtown Lumiere Place and the recently opened River City in suburban St. Louis. The tour also included lunch at Hubert Keller's Burger Bar at Lumiere (Keller also operates the Burger Bar at Mandalay Place on the Strip).

A reader from St. Louis emailed me over the weekend to say he asked employees at Lumiere about the blog item. The workers confirmed the visit.

So was Wynn, fresh off his abandonment of a planned $600 million casino project in Philadelphia, now shopping in other regional casino markets?

Last week, Las Vegas-based Pinnacle Entertainment said it was scrapping a second casino project in Lake Charles, La., to concentrate on its core properties.

In March, Pinnacle said it would close an aging third casino in St. Louis by this summer and would return that property's gaming license to Missouri gaming regulators.

Some speculate Wynn might be angling for that gaming license.