Casino Connection Nevada

Mark Brandenburg

by Staff

Mark Brandenburg is a Las Vegas native who left his law practice to join the family business running the Golden Gate Casino in Downtown Las Vegas. With his brother, he applied for a loan to start buying out some of the partners, who bought the property in 1955.

After spending the next several years buying out the remaining partners, Brandenburg became the owner of the property. With just 106 hotel rooms and a small floor with 300 slot machines and 15 table games, the Golden Gate is one of the smallest casinos on Fremont Street.

Recently, the small and intimate nature of the property caught the attention of Derek Stevens of Desert Rock Enterprises, which recently completed the acquisition of 50 percent of the property.

Brandenburg met recently with Casino Connection Managing Editor Greg Jones to discuss the new partner, the property and, of course, the legendary shrimp cocktail.

Casino Connection: Desert Rock Enterprises recently completed the process to buy a 50 percent interest in this property. How did that relationship develop? Were you looking for an investor or was it a case where they approached you?

Brandenburg: We had been looking at various alternatives for developing and improving the property that included getting financing to do the kinds of things we needed here. One year ago today, I still didn’t have a slot system, I still didn’t have ticket-in/ticket-out with my slots. It was a big financial commitment for us to do that so we were looking at various scenarios to do the kinds of things that were necessary to do here.

One day I just got a call from one of our people in HR down the hall that said there were a couple people looking to talk to the owner. My secretary was out for that day and I said, “Well, OK,” and I poked my head down the hall to see what was going on. I saw a couple people standing there in T-shirts and shorts and flip-flops and said, “Oh, well,” because you never know what kind of inquiries you’re going to get in this business.

Keeping the conversation in the hallway rather than bring it directly into my office, I stepped down to find out why they were here. It was Derek Stevens and one of his officers was with him and he very politely and very professionally in a matter of 45 seconds explained to me that he was in town for a Riviera shareholders’ meeting and had been driving around to look at some of his real estate.

He apologized for his appearance and he apologized for showing up without an appointment, but he had been walking around and noticed that there was a newspaper article downstairs that described us as a family-owned business and didn’t know whether I had any interest in additional capital or any capital projects where he might be a benefit. Within about 45 seconds it was very clear to me that I was talking with somebody that knew what he was doing and invited him to come in and talk a little further. And frankly, it went from there.

It’s been reported that Derek was impressed that when he asked to speak to the owner, you were actually on-site and able to speak with him. Do you know what else about this property was attractive to him?

He did like the idea that it was an owner-operated property, and he explained his reasoning for that was that his company was a family-owned business. He liked that for ease of decision-making and control over what you’re doing financially, but he also just liked the feel and the nature of the property.

The Golden Gate is different from other places. It’s Las Vegas’ most historic hotel and casino. Our doors opened here in 1906. They were throwing dice and drinking whiskey here in 1906, until it was outlawed in 1911. He liked the look and feel of the property for starters. He liked what we had discussed in terms of the opportunity to take it to the next level. I think we’ve got a property that has some strong attraction to people who know we’re here, but we did have some capital needs.

I had spent a lot of my resources and time over the years buying out the existing partners and now we’re in a position where it was time to get the new technology, the ticket-in/ticket-out slots, the slot system, the marketing benefits and facility that comes with having that. To do that you’re not only buying an expensive slot system, we had to replace most of our slot floor because we had some pretty old slot equipment there.

We also talked about renovating our hotel rooms and doing some more things with technology with point-of-sale systems and with hotel registration and our website. He saw that we had some real good solid fundamentals here in terms of a location and certain qualities with the property, but particularly he saw that he could bring added value to the partnership.

One thing people in Las Vegas may know Derek Stevens from is that he was the public face when the Stevens Baseball Group bought the Las Vegas 51s. You’ve already been able to put together a cross marketing promotion through which everyone in attendance at a 51s home game gets a free shrimp cocktail when the team scores 10 or more runs. How is that working for you?

It has happened twice and the deal was already in place. We had people shoving through with their coupons after the games to claim their free shrimp cocktails. That was another tricky thing and another wonderful thing about having Derek and Greg as partners. As we were about halfway through the licensing process for the gaming license, Derek gave me a call one day and explained to me that he had this interest in buying the team and wanted to know if I had any particular thoughts on it, and all I could do was smile and say, “Yeah! That sounds like a great thing.”

We developed some ideas for the cross marketing and this was one that Derek was able to suggest that we loved. It gives us the opportunity to go ahead and promote one thing that we’re very well-known for, which is being the original Las Vegas shrimp cocktail, and they get to do something that’s fun out on the field. They get a kick out of it, and we’ve had a pretty good response from it.

Out at the 51s games, what they do, again this is Derek’s suggestion, he’s got them playing now on their brand new scoreboard on the field when they get to five runs they play that “halfway there” part of the Bon Jovi song “Living on a Prayer” and the graphics of the shrimp cocktail hitting a ball and running bases. It’s been fun and I think it’ll continue to be a lot of fun and I think we’ll continue to find ways to cross-market.

In terms of redevelopment, there has been talk about turning this into a boutique hotel, but that word has been thrown around so much it is hard to even figure out what that means. What does the word boutique mean to you as it pertains to the future of this property?

It’s amazing to me how often I hear people throwing around the word “boutique” and they’re talking about developing a 1,500-room hotel casino resort. My understanding of the word and I think the true understanding of the word is you are talking about a place that has a more intimate environment if you’re going to be boutique. I don’t think that means going much over 100 rooms to create that kind of intimacy in terms of scale. It also means there’s something unique about your characteristics and that’s where I think the Golden Gate really sets itself apart from any other place in Las Vegas, because this is the most historic hotel in Las Vegas from both a gaming perspective and the rooms and being right here at the corner of Fremont Street and Main where Las Vegas started.

It provides us with some unique characteristics and opportunities to tell our story and talk about the history of Las Vegas. The history of Las Vegas has always meant something on the cutting edge and so that’s where our new relationship with Derek Stevens has been particularly exciting. He’s somebody who really has an aptitude for technology as well as helping bring additional resources to us. The slots are state of the art, we now have down in our casino and our bar brand new 65-inch LED TV screens so we can show sports and that kind of entertainment people like to see and we are now in the process of renovating our hotel rooms.

Our rooms are of modest size and we’re going to take them and clean them up and give them a little bit of style and personality but by the same token they’re going to have flat-screen TVs in the rooms and we’re going to have wireless access, that sort of thing.

You mentioned that the rooms are of modest size. Any plans to knock down walls and make some suites?

We’re still exploring that, but no, that’s not our first goal.

I know that the trend in Las Vegas it to continue to make the rooms larger and larger, but I don’t think that’s what we’re hearing from our guests, from our visitors, what they want.

They want a place they can stay that is a reasonably comfortable and pleasant environment. They’re not looking for a room where they can put on their roller skates or anything like that.

That’s not our first priority.

We might look at one or two rooms to do a couple of things like that down the road. We also have the opportunity here as a next step to go ahead and add on to our hotel and expand.

It’s very preliminary right now in terms of any expansion. Our real focus right now is to go ahead and renovate the rooms and have them up and going. We’ve been working on getting a lot of the technology needs and within about a month we’ll have a new point-of-sale system for our food outlets that will integrate with our slot player system; on the hotel side, new hotel management and reservation system.

We’ve been working on our new website. What we’ve got is a bit dated. We’re really excited to have a presence and let people know where we are. When you’re a 106-room hotel competing against megaresorts and the number of megaresorts and the billions of dollars that are being spent these days, first it’s nice to be different, but it’s also not as easy to let people know we’re here. That’s our No. 1 challenge, which we’re doing a few things with our association with the 51s and our continued amazing popularity of our shrimp cocktail and our distinction as being the oldest hotel and casino in Las Vegas.