Barbary Coast Hotel and Casino
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| Number of rooms | 197 | |
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| Theme | 1890s San Francisco | |
| Gaming space | 30,000 square feet | |
| Permanent show(s) | Free lounge entertainment | |
| Signature attraction(s) | Big Elvis, a 600+ pound Elvis impersonator | |
| Notable restaurant(s) | Drai's Michael's The Victorian Room |
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| Owner | Boyd Gaming Corporation | |
| Date opened | 1979 | |
| Casino type | Land-Based | |
| Major renovation(s) | 2001 | |
| Previous name(s) | None | |
| Casino website | barbarycoastcasino.com | |
The Barbary Coast Hotel & Casino is a hotel and casino located on the famed Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was built in 1979 and is owned and operated by Boyd Gaming Corporation. With only 196 rooms, it is one of the smaller properties on the strip. With its old wood and stained glass interior, it is one of the few establishments on the Strip to offer the feeling of the old Las Vegas.
On September 6, 2005, Boyd Gaming purchased the 4.3 acres (17,000 m²) of land under the hotel for $16 million. The hotel had been leasing the land prior to this point. There are plans in the works to sell the property to Harrah's Entertainment to be torn down and used as a parking garage expansion for the adjacent Flamingo.
In September 2005, Centex Destination Properties, a Texas-based home builder, and Tharaldson Cos., a North Dakota-based hotel developer, purchased the 15-acre Westward Ho site for $145.5 million. Centex, at the time, was the managing partner. Their plan was to go in on a joint-venture high-rise condominium complex.
Two months later in November, the sprawling Westward Ho, which at one time was the largest motel in the world, was razed.
In March 2006, Tharaldson ponied up $170 million to buy out Centex, then announced plans to build a $1.8 billion megaresort with 1,000 hotel-condo units, 600 residential condos, a 600-room hotel, an 80,000-square-foot casino, and 200,000 square feet of retail space.
Then, last month, Harrah’s announced that it was swapping 24 acres adjacent to the Stardust with Boyd Gaming in exchange for Boyd’s Barbary Coast. Harrah’s had quietly purchased the 15-acre Westward Ho property, along with a nine-acre strip separating the Ho from the Stardust (the roadway between the two that connects the Strip to Industrial Road), for $365 million. In return, Harrah’s gains the 4.3-acre Barbary Coast, paying $84.8 million an acre to complete a $1 billion 350-acre jigsaw puzzle on the east side of the Strip.
Including the 24 acres it gets from Harrah’s, Boyd now owns 87 contiguous acres on the north Strip. Boyd, so far, is claiming that the additional land doesn’t change its plans for Echelon Place, the $4 billion metaresort the company will begin building on the Stardust site in spring 2007. So we’ll have to see to what use Boyd puts the Ho in the next few years. (From LasVegasAdvisor.com)
[edit] Trivia
The Flaming Lips' "Halloween on the Barbary Coast" from Hit to Death in the Future Head (1992) was written after the band was kicked out of Caesars Palace due to a lack of personal hygiene. The motley bunch ventured across Las Vegas Boulevard to Barbary Coast where striking hotel employees heckled them, told them crossing a picket line was 'un-American' and declared over a mega phone "Look everybody ... It's Halloween on the Barbary Coast!"
[edit] External links
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| Boyd Gaming | |||||||||||||
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| Annual Revenue: $2.22 billion USD Employees: 23,000 Stock Symbol: NYSE: BYD Website: www.boydgaming.com |
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