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JW Marriot After Local Market

LAS VEGAS -- Las Vegas gamblers have heard the pitch from executives at the Resort at Summerlin since it opened in 1999 and then again after it was renamed the Regent Las Vegas.

"We want locals," the bosses said. "The (Resort/Regent) wants your business."

But they didn't get enough of the local gambling business, and the $370-million hotel-casino was sold for $80 million last fall in a bankruptcy auction to a Vancouver-based hotel operator, Hotspur Resorts.

Hotspur renamed the property JW Marriott, linking the hotel to the Marriott's powerful room reservation system, and inked a 10-year lease with veteran Las Vegas casino executive Bill Paulos and his partners to operate the property's money-losing casino.

Paulos is confident his team has the expertise and the capital to reverse the casino's fortunes.

"The original operators turned their back on the local market despite wanting to attract locals," Paulos said. "They tried to be a Scottsdale-type resort without inviting their neighbors."

The Swiss owners of the property tried to drop a property appealing to European tastes in the middle of suburban Las Vegas, he said.

The table games pit was in a sunken pit below the rest of the casino's floor level, and access to the pit was channeled through a few stairways.

"The first thing we noticed when we looked at the property was that there were walls everywhere. You had too many barriers for ease of traffic flow. People couldn't walk around, and people couldn't see the activity in and around the casino. People don't want stairs in their homes, and they certainly don't want them in a casino."

Restaurants were another problem. "The buffet was nice but it was in an area above the casino accessible by the world's longest escalator," he cracked. "The cafe was on the other side of the property."

Paulos and his partners are investing $6 million to fix the casino's most serious problems.

Already fixed is the casino floor, which was elevated to the same level as the rest of the ground floor, and access to the casino, improved by removal of a number of walls blocking access to the table games.

The Rampart Buffet and the Promenade Cafe are both slated to open in July just off the casino floor, with a casino-owned steakhouse set to open in July replacing the casino's now-closed poker room.

"It's important to have a cafe and buffet close to the casino floor," Paulos said. "You have to give people choice, and you want to create excitement and action in and around the casino."

Additional money will be spent updating the casino's data tracking systems, which Paulos characterized as inadequate.

To determine what the 173,000 people living within a three-mile radius of the property wanted from the Rampart Casino, property marketing executives sent out 50,000 pieces of direct mail asking for feedback.

More than 11,000 people returned the surveys.

"It was an amazing response," Paulos said. "They want us to succeed, they just want the value."

Paulos has added a number of ticket-in, ticket-out slot machines, full-pay video poker machines and other new machines.

The JW Marriott name on the 541-room hotel will also help, he said.

"The Regent name is powerful in Asia, but Americans have never heard of it. Everyone knows Marriott, and they know it is a top-flight product."

Room occupancy and rates have been on the upswing, and the additional foot traffic and gambling action the hotel allows will be a nice bonus for the locals-focused casino, he said.

Paulos' application to operate the JW Marriott's casino was approved Thursday on a 5-0 vote by the Nevada Gaming Commission.

Nevada Palace owner majority owner Bill Wortman and Las Vegas Paving owner Bob Mendenhall are Paulos' partners.

The group's Millennium Management is slated to take over the casino on April 1 from original casino operator Resort at Summerlin, and it will be renamed the Rampart Casino.

"We wanted to people to recognize we're on Rampart Boulevard, and the name seemed a natural," Paulos said.

The hotel will retain the JW Marriott brand.

In addition to operating the Rampart Casino the group has a management contract to run Detroit's Greektown Casino and is currently building a $100 million locals casino in North Las Vegas at the Intersection of Craig Road and Losee Road.

The North Las Vegas casino is slated to be called The Cannery, and Paulos and his partners plan to link its slot club with the Rampart Casino's club.

Marriott, with more than 2,000 hotels spread across 10 different brands, operates 17 JW Marriott hotels.

Marriott's Web site describes JW Marriott as its most elegant brand.

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