Grand Sierra Resort For Sale

Yesterday’s RGJ reported that the Grand Sierra Resort is negotiating with a few interested parties on the sale of the property.  All involved parties are quiet on the details but the RGJ reported that “The Grand Sierra Resort Corp. bought the property for $150 million from Caesars Entertainment in 2005.”
If The Grand Sierra Resort Corporation bought at the peak of the market, then, based off of median price declines for residential property (26.4%), today’s selling price should be around $110 million.
We’ll see what it ends up selling for.  I hope the new owners put in the long-awaited indoor water park.

[Update 08/01:  Mike Van H references his posts regarding the GSR Sale in his comment below.  Interested readers can read those posts on Mike’s site, Downtown Makeover.] 

 

10 comments

  1. Mike Van H

    Hi Guy, you should check out my two posts on GSR. RGJ broke the story about a week late, and didn’t include any of the juicy details. 1. You aren’t getting a water park. Does it really make sense GSR is still promising this while at the same time his property is about to sell? That would be like putting my house up for sale and telling my neighbors ‘oh sure the new owners are going to install the $200,000 koi pond I promised you all I would install’.
    2. Perhaps some of the sales number gurus on this blog can enlighten us as to how many hotel-condos sold, because JP Morgan/GSR said they had to sell more than half of the 840 for them to receive financing for the water park and Bellagio style fountains. I bet that hasn’t happened.
    I’ll email you with the real nitty gritty.

  2. Paul

    Mike, why not just post the nitty gritty here? Sounds interesting.

  3. Martanion

    Mike, you are just teasing!!Whats the GSR word?

  4. Eugene Hill

    I understand the resort goes into foreclosure tomorrow. Do you know who JP Morgan/GSR is using to unload the property?

  5. DowntownMakeoverDude

    JP Morgan has already acquired the property and handed it to one of its subsidiaries, not sure how it could go into foreclosure when the bank already owns/controls it?

    There are a couple of interested parties who are negotiating to buy it from JP Morgan, and from wha tI heard at half its appriased value.

  6. DowntownMakeoverDude

    oops a couple of typos there sorry, typed it from my Treo while lurking around at the Strega bar. At one point in time there were 3 or 4 interested buyers in GSR but I wonder if the credit market freeze halted all that real quick.
    Perhaps a foreclosure on the resort is some formality that has to happen for JP to fully acuire it and sell the note to someone else, but that’s been their plan for a while now and is no surprise. …not sure where you heard about a forclosure, I’d love to hear more as I have 3 or 4 ongoing sources regarding the happenings at GSR…

  7. GSR Insider

    Things are not looking good at Grand Sierra Resort. Lay offs have been ongoing since late fall and still progressing. The first went a large number of the house keeping staff. That makes sense in a way. We were going into the slow season, and less perminent staff cleaning less occupied rooms made sense. Except for one problem. They laid off so many people that there weren’t enough people to clean the rooms. Grand Sierra solved this problem by hiring temps. Now instead of each house keeper using a key to get into the rooms they clean, a supervisor walks around checking rooms and if no one is there, they unlock it so that eventually a temp can clean the room. Now thefts from rooms have gone threw the roof. Grand Sierra has also laid off a large number of their porters. On a busy night a spill may remain for hours and usually does. Every night that there is not a serious injury and corresponding person injury law suit is a miracle. Next on the hit list and this is about to happen is the engineering staff. They only make sure the place doesn’t fall apart or burn down and now there will be alot less of them. There are other departments at Grand Sierra that are going to be hit, but the ones that involve the safety off the guests and their belongings are the ones that I feel are most note worthy. Lay offs are natural during times like these and they help companies survive until things recover. When the critical staff is eliminated it causes me to question whether it is their intention to stay open. If not those condo units that people bought and are now trying to sell, not to mention the many many foreclosed units will be virtually worthless given that owners can only stay in them 30 days a year, and now has no generating any meaningful income from hotel rentals. My bet is Grand Sierra will close its doors by the end of June.

  8. investor

    Grand Sierra looks like a good investment. I toured the property in Feb ’11. It was clean and busy. The marble/ granit bathrooms and stainless kitchenettes were second to none. The wall paper and furniture reminded me of a tacky Sinatra/ Martin decore… but for pennies on the dollar it was excellent…much better than any distressed short sale that I’ve ever seen. I’m in on the hotel revenue program. 50% of the condo’s gross revenue is mine. Condo fee is $380.

  9. investor

    Granite bathrooms and glass shower are beautiful!

  10. helen

    Publish some picture of the “Grand Sierra Resort” anyway thank 🙂 It can be the resort sold in a long run , person who looking at resort property to buy, so this is it .

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