City-led economic development efforts in Reno are giving casino operators some hope that they will be able to better compete with tribal casinos in California.

A new baseball stadium and a number of new businesses in the downtown area are bringing people near the casinos, and operators now need to work on bringing them through the doors.

The Silver Legacy Resort Casino is essentially land-locked. Unable to expand outward, general manager Gary Carano is forced to better utilize the floors on his property to keep customers coming back.

One strategy is to use more slot machines that run a number of games, freeing up space on the gaming floor.

“Today’s slots, especially the pennies, offer a multitude of games so you don’t need as many,” Carano said. “Plus, they are twice as expensive as they used to be.

“The gaming floors are reducing in size and what we are doing is either putting restaurants on the floors or nightclubs and enlarging our other amenities like our race and sports book.”

The Atlantis Casino Resort Spa has more room to work with, and a $100 million expansion brought a bridge to the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, renovated the rooms and brought new bars restaurants and a spa. It is the future of the Reno market, according to Atlantis CEO John Farahi, who thinks the area needs more full-scale resorts to compete with California.

“Whoever has the total resort concept, with all of their amenities that the guests expect today, those are the ones that will survive,” he said. “The properties that are substandard in this market are probably going to go by the wayside.”

In the last nine years, 12 casinos have failed in Reno.

“They didn’t keep their properties fresh,” Carano said specifically of Mapes and Fitzgeralds. “They woke up one day and it was too late.

“The strong will survive. Those who compete and keep their properties fresh and exciting will be the ones that last. Those that don’t will go by the wayside, as history has shown.”

By Casino Connection Staff