The casino owner still hasn’t reopened a hotel from the pandemic shutdowns, but it just spent a big sum of money on the property.
Casino owner Boyd Gaming Corp. still hasn’t reopened Eastside Cannery from the pandemic shutdowns, though it just spent a big sum of money on the property.
Boyd purchased the land underneath its shuttered hotel-casino on Boulder Highway in the eastern Las Vegas Valley for $45 million, property records indicate. The sale closed last week.
The company had acquired Eastside Cannery in 2016 but was leasing the land.
Last year, Boyd said in a letter to Clark County officials that market conditions did not support the property’s reopening amid “plenty of excess capacity” at its neighboring Sam’s Town hotel-casino.
Boyd was spending millions of dollars a year on rent, as it did not own Eastside Cannery’s land, and “if the demand was there to open and cover those payments, the Company would certainly do so,” wrote Michelle Rasmusson, Boyd’s chief compliance officer.
“However, at this time, that is not the case and we will need market conditions to change in order for us to reevaluate,” she wrote.
After the Las Vegas Review-Journal asked why it bought the land now and if it has any plans to reopen the property, Boyd spokesman David Strow said, “We do not have anything additional to share at this time.”
Bill Wortman, co-founder of Eastside Cannery’s former operator, sold the roughly 29.5-acre spread to Boyd, and his ground lease with the company was terminated when the sale closed, according to state and county records and securities filings.
Wortman could not be reached for comment.
‘Economic conditions’
Boyd announced in spring 2016 that it was buying the Las Vegas assets of Cannery Casino Resorts for $230 million. Under the deal, it acquired the Cannery hotel-casino in North Las Vegas and Eastside Cannery.
At the time, Boyd said Eastside Cannery featured 300-plus hotel rooms, a 64,000-square-foot casino, several bars and restaurants, a 250-seat entertainment lounge and 20,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space.
In March 2020, then-Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered casinos and other businesses in Nevada closed to help contain the coronavirus outbreak. Nevada’s casinos were allowed to reopen in June 2020, but Eastside Cannery remains closed to this day, with barricades still blocking drivers from entering the property.
In her April 2024 letter to Clark County officials, Rasmusson wrote that “economic conditions and demand” will dictate when Eastside Cannery reopens.
She also wrote that Boyd would need to hire a few hundred employees to reopen the property, but the company was having “significant workforce challenges” across its Southern Nevada portfolio, with more than 400 open positions in the region that it was actively trying to fill.
Police and fire training
Even though it’s closed for business, Eastside Cannery has not been sitting idle.
Boyd was investing more than a half-million dollars each month “to keep the property well-maintained and safe,” Rasmusson told the county, adding there was routine daily maintenance, IT systems upkeep, and security.
“Additionally, we routinely run water to keep the system fresh and healthy,” she wrote.
Other organizations have made use of the property, as well.
Three Square Food Bank used the property for a weekly food-distribution site during the pandemic, and police and firefighters used it for training drills.
The Metropolitan Police Department conducted more than a dozen training exercises at Eastside Cannery, including room clearing, active-shooter scenarios and cadet seminars. Crime-scene investigators also used hotel rooms as part of their academy testing, Rasmusson wrote.
Plus, the Clark County Fire Department used the property to train on stairwells and to practice room searches and elevator rescues.
