MGM Resorts’ hotel in Jean ‘scaled back’
MGM Resorts International has scaled back operations at the Gold Strike in Jean, closing a 500-room hotel tower, reducing restaurant and gaming activities, and laying off roughly 60 workers.
Company spokesman Alan Feldman said changes at the casino on Interstate 15, about 25 miles south of Las Vegas, are prompted by diminished business levels.
Feldman said efforts are being taken to transfer the 60 employees who are losing their jobs to positions at other MGM Resorts hotel-casinos.
The move comes almost four years after MGM Resorts closed and demolished the Nevada Landing in Jean. At the time, MGM Resorts considered entering a joint-venture partnership to master-plan a 166-acre mixed-use development. The business deal fell through, however, when the economy went into a recession.
The 303-room Nevada Landing closed in March 2007 and was torn down a few months later.
Under plans announced Friday, the Gold Strike will continue to operate a 300-room tower.
An undisclosed number of slot machines will be taken out of service and table game operations will not be open during midweek graveyard hours. The Gold Strike’s coffee shop will close and the property’s steakhouse will be reconfigured into a three-meal-a-day eatery.
Following the layoffs, the Gold Strike will employ just under 300 workers.
In 2007, MGM Resorts executives said the Jean properties had lost business over the years to Southern California-based American Indian casinos.
MGM Resorts acquired the Gold Strike and Nevada Landing and several adjacent Jean land parcels as part of the company’s $7.9 billion buyout of the Mandalay Resort Group in April 2005. The Gold Strike was built by a partnership that included David Belding, Mike Ensign and William Richardson.
Contact reporter Howard Stutz at hstutz@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3871.
