Loveman: If customers spend more, Caesars will hire workers
Caesars Entertainment Corp. Chairman Gary Loveman has his own job creation plan — if visitors spend more, the company will add workers.
Loveman was interviewed on Public Television’s Nightly Business Report last week, a few hours before President Barack Obama delivered his plan for creating jobs to a nationally televised joint session of Congress.
He was disappointed, however, that Obama wasn’t planning to address the housing crisis as part of the speech.
“If we don’t stimulate the housing market properly, there’s very little likelihood we’ll see meaningful job growth,” Loveman said.
If the housing market stabilizes, Loveman said, consumers would be able to use their credit cards and spend extra money to stimulate the economy.
If visitor spending increases at Caesars casinos, including the company’s 10 Strip area resorts, the company could grow its workforce.
“For us to do more hiring, we need more visitors and the visitors spending more money,” Loveman said. “And the reason that they will do that is because they feel more secure in their own finances.”
Loveman also discussed Project Linq, the $550 million nongaming, retail, dining and, entertainment district Caesars is developing on the east side of the Strip, which will be an anchored by 550-foot tall observation wheel. The company expects to add about 1,500 full-time jobs through the project.
He cited the development, which is expected to break ground this month, as an innovative and creative way for a company to invest to grow their businesses.
“Traditional means of growth are largely limited, and the data has shown that very clearly,” Loveman said of the Strip’s overgrown resort market. “We already have most of what any of that would involve.”
Business, Loveman said, needs to, “do things that are innovative, rather than just building bigger and bigger assets that are already underutilized.”
