To date, Landry’s Restaurant chairman and CEO, Tilman Fertitta has spent $100-million renovating his Golden Nugget resort casino downtown–and he’s convinced its equal or better to anything that a rival Strip property could offer. And he’s not stopping yet! His 14-month project added new restaurants and amenities and revamped existing facilities there, but as he told me at the opening of Rich Little’s new engagement in the Nugget showroom: “We’re now under construction of a new tower, and once we get it completed alongside the existing building, we will have the finest luxury suites anywhere. And our spa can match the best in the world.”

I asked how he felt having a shining four-star golden property in the downtown corridor when all the neighboring hotels looked dowdy and aged by comparison.

“Naturally, if I could, I would buy everything and renovate them as well to bring them up to our standards. But it’s beginning to happen, and downtown is alive and well with a new energy and getting better every day,” he told me. “We’re setting a high standard and we won’t stop adding to it with different attractions. With all the new condos coming on line downtown, they will match our standards and hopefully the owners or new owners of the other hotels will step in and make major upgrades over the next few years. I am very bullish on what’s happening now downtown, and our Mayor is doing an incredible job at bringing it back to a premiere destination. I don’t know any other official who could have championed the cause so well.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 10:11 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.