Entrepreneurial Error, Vegas Style

The highest and best use possible for southern Nevada land is for a hotel/casino. But these aren't normal times. The Boyd Group, a sophisticated casino operator, bought the Eastside Cannery and the Cannery in North Las Vegas for $230 million in 2016. “Developer Bill Wortman opened the $250 million eastside cannery project in summer 2008, replacing the 1970s-era Nevada Palace, and his team figured the newly built resort would create excitement on the east side of town,” reports the Las Vegas Review Journal.

 But the Boyd Group  couldn't make the property featuring 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 work after closing during COVID. After no viable buyers appeared they demolished the building without the usual Vegas fanfare. 

 What was left was 29.5 acres that Boyd was leasing. The company purchased the land last year for $45 million. In for a penny, in for a pound as they say. 

This week the gamers finally stopped the bleeding by selling the property to an entity that will landbank the parcel for mega-homebuilder Lennar for $29 million.

Though COVID  is part of this story “The other type is an entrepreneurial failure to foresee and thus inability to satisfy consumer wants. When consumers change their minds, which entrepreneurs are painfully aware that do often and without warning, a business that is not positioned for the new situation or is too slow to adapt to it *should* go out of business. It matters not what the reason for this change is—a sudden change in tastes, a new fashion trend, a pandemic, war, etc. To the degree that consumers no longer want what a firm offers, that firm should either adapt or go out of business,” wrote Per Byland.

To make the point, the LVRJ’s Eli Segal wrote, “Overall, the sale closes the book on a hotel-casino that was torn down and imploded less than 20 years after it opened.”