It's a much broader problem in Vegas, than that, but this hottie is hurting.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a5I2yxVie96I&refer=home
Leigh Sogoloff, a lap-dancing at Rick's Cabaret Vegas, poses for a portrait at the club in Las Vegas, on Oct. 7, 2008. Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg New
Losing Las Vegas Shows How Americans Crap Out in Housing Casino
By Daniel Taub and Dan Levy
More Photos/Details
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Leigh Sogoloff, who spends her evenings lap-dancing at Rick's Cabaret Vegas on Procyon Street, says she's making half her income of a year ago.
``You don't shop, you don't buy stuff you can't afford,'' the 36-year-old Sogoloff said between dances at the Las Vegas club. She has postponed buying a house and is reading Deepak Chopra. ``I know how to save money. I'm not a dumb stripper.''
The city that sold Americans on the dream they could lay down a small wager and walk away millionaires is reeling from speculation in the housing market that helped bring down Wall Street. The quick profits that so easily spread from Nevada to Florida, just as casino gambling migrated to 37 states, are now proving what happens in Vegas rarely stays in Vegas.
Las Vegas leads the nation in falling home prices, foreclosures and stalled construction projects. Rick's Cabaret International Inc., with 20 clubs in seven states and two in Buenos Aires, has lost 74 percent of its market value this year.
The ``main nerve'' of the American dream runs through this desert metropolis, Hunter S. Thompson concluded in his 1971 book, ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.'' Chopra, the spiritual teacher whose writings Sogoloff has turned to, said that less than 2 percent of the $3 trillion to $4 trillion that circulates in the world's markets daily is used for goods and services.
`Pure Speculation'
``The rest is trying to make money off money,'' said Chopra, adjunct professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois. ``Our financial structure which, of course, is an American system but is now global, is pure speculation. It's gambling.''
More than $10 billion of hotel and casino projects with 10,000 rooms have been delayed on Las Vegas Boulevard, better known the world over as the Strip, according to locally based real estate and economic consulting firm Applied Analysis LLC.
Gaming revenue for casinos on the Strip fell for the eighth straight month in August from a year earlier, the longest streak of declines since records began in 1983, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board in Carson City. The 16 percent drop in May was a record. August revenue fell 7.4 percent.
``The only comparable period was around 9/11, when we were down for five straight months,'' Frank Streshley, senior analyst at the board, said in an interview. ``This is a very difficult time for the gaming industry.''
Empty Houses
A row of bank-owned homes in the Silverado neighborhood of Las Vegas, April 25, 2008. Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg News
All this in a state that led the U.S. housing boom with an estimated 275,000 new homes built from 2000 to 2007, a 33 percent increase that was the highest of any state, according to the Census Bureau. Now, many of those homes are empty and worth less than when they were built.
The bust that started almost three years ago has brought down New York-based securities firm Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and led to the forced sales of investment banks Bear Stearns Cos. and Merrill Lynch & Co., and led to more than 137,000 job losses in financial services worldwide.
Las Vegas had the biggest home-price decline in the country in July and Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in August. One in 91 homes in Nevada were in some stage of default, compared with one in 416 for the U.S. overall. California had the second-highest rate and the most foreclosure filings, and Florida had the second- most filings.
The signs of decline are right on the Strip, where Boyd Gaming Corp.'s $4.75 billion Echelon casino and resort may be the most obvious symbol for the city's economic slowdown.
Idle Cranes
Boyd said on Aug. 1 it would halt construction of the Echelon, a 5,000-room property with five hotel towers, after investing $500 million. The company broke ground on the 87-acre development, on the site of the demolished Stardust hotel at the northern end of the Strip, in June 2007, just before the onset of the global credit crunch.
Construction equipment, including two excavators and one backhoe, sat idle last week. Six tower cranes stood poised over the project's steel skeleton, which was halted at the ninth story. The tallest tower is to be 58 stories. The cranes may stay there until building resumes, said Ryan McPhee, a Las Vegas developer who monitors construction in town.
``With things slowing down, there may not be the demand'' for the equipment, McPhee said. ``There's almost no way to get financing for projects right now.''
Boyd will delay Echelon for ``three or four quarters, assuming the economy turns and credit markets open up,'' said spokesman Rob Stillwell.
CityCenter Project
``When a home-grown leader like Boyd builds a mega-resort framework, then suddenly says they're halting the project, that's a stunner,'' said George McCabe of B&P Advertising and Public Relations, which creates ad campaigns for Las Vegas's real estate industry. ``It's scary.''
A relative bright spot on the Strip may be CityCenter, an $11.2 billion joint venture between MGM Mirage, the world's second largest casino operator, and Dubai World, a holding company for the government of Dubai. About 60 percent of the development's 2,647 luxury condominium and hotel-condo units are under contract, with $350 million in non-refundable deposits.
``Our product is different and we're selling real estate for future delivery,'' said Tony Dennis, executive vice president.
At Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport, the total number of arriving and departing passengers in August dropped 9.9 percent from a year earlier, when a record 4.3 million passengers went through the airport. Highway traffic declined 4.9 percent through July, the latest month for which figures are available, the visitors authority said.
-cont'd below-
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a5I2yxVie96I&refer=home
Leigh Sogoloff, a lap-dancing at Rick's Cabaret Vegas, poses for a portrait at the club in Las Vegas, on Oct. 7, 2008. Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg New
Losing Las Vegas Shows How Americans Crap Out in Housing Casino
By Daniel Taub and Dan Levy
More Photos/Details
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Leigh Sogoloff, who spends her evenings lap-dancing at Rick's Cabaret Vegas on Procyon Street, says she's making half her income of a year ago.
``You don't shop, you don't buy stuff you can't afford,'' the 36-year-old Sogoloff said between dances at the Las Vegas club. She has postponed buying a house and is reading Deepak Chopra. ``I know how to save money. I'm not a dumb stripper.''
The city that sold Americans on the dream they could lay down a small wager and walk away millionaires is reeling from speculation in the housing market that helped bring down Wall Street. The quick profits that so easily spread from Nevada to Florida, just as casino gambling migrated to 37 states, are now proving what happens in Vegas rarely stays in Vegas.
Las Vegas leads the nation in falling home prices, foreclosures and stalled construction projects. Rick's Cabaret International Inc., with 20 clubs in seven states and two in Buenos Aires, has lost 74 percent of its market value this year.
The ``main nerve'' of the American dream runs through this desert metropolis, Hunter S. Thompson concluded in his 1971 book, ``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.'' Chopra, the spiritual teacher whose writings Sogoloff has turned to, said that less than 2 percent of the $3 trillion to $4 trillion that circulates in the world's markets daily is used for goods and services.
`Pure Speculation'
``The rest is trying to make money off money,'' said Chopra, adjunct professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois. ``Our financial structure which, of course, is an American system but is now global, is pure speculation. It's gambling.''
More than $10 billion of hotel and casino projects with 10,000 rooms have been delayed on Las Vegas Boulevard, better known the world over as the Strip, according to locally based real estate and economic consulting firm Applied Analysis LLC.
Gaming revenue for casinos on the Strip fell for the eighth straight month in August from a year earlier, the longest streak of declines since records began in 1983, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board in Carson City. The 16 percent drop in May was a record. August revenue fell 7.4 percent.
``The only comparable period was around 9/11, when we were down for five straight months,'' Frank Streshley, senior analyst at the board, said in an interview. ``This is a very difficult time for the gaming industry.''
Empty Houses
A row of bank-owned homes in the Silverado neighborhood of Las Vegas, April 25, 2008. Photographer: Jacob Kepler/Bloomberg News
All this in a state that led the U.S. housing boom with an estimated 275,000 new homes built from 2000 to 2007, a 33 percent increase that was the highest of any state, according to the Census Bureau. Now, many of those homes are empty and worth less than when they were built.
The bust that started almost three years ago has brought down New York-based securities firm Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and led to the forced sales of investment banks Bear Stearns Cos. and Merrill Lynch & Co., and led to more than 137,000 job losses in financial services worldwide.
Las Vegas had the biggest home-price decline in the country in July and Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in August. One in 91 homes in Nevada were in some stage of default, compared with one in 416 for the U.S. overall. California had the second-highest rate and the most foreclosure filings, and Florida had the second- most filings.
The signs of decline are right on the Strip, where Boyd Gaming Corp.'s $4.75 billion Echelon casino and resort may be the most obvious symbol for the city's economic slowdown.
Idle Cranes
Boyd said on Aug. 1 it would halt construction of the Echelon, a 5,000-room property with five hotel towers, after investing $500 million. The company broke ground on the 87-acre development, on the site of the demolished Stardust hotel at the northern end of the Strip, in June 2007, just before the onset of the global credit crunch.
Construction equipment, including two excavators and one backhoe, sat idle last week. Six tower cranes stood poised over the project's steel skeleton, which was halted at the ninth story. The tallest tower is to be 58 stories. The cranes may stay there until building resumes, said Ryan McPhee, a Las Vegas developer who monitors construction in town.
``With things slowing down, there may not be the demand'' for the equipment, McPhee said. ``There's almost no way to get financing for projects right now.''
Boyd will delay Echelon for ``three or four quarters, assuming the economy turns and credit markets open up,'' said spokesman Rob Stillwell.
CityCenter Project
``When a home-grown leader like Boyd builds a mega-resort framework, then suddenly says they're halting the project, that's a stunner,'' said George McCabe of B&P Advertising and Public Relations, which creates ad campaigns for Las Vegas's real estate industry. ``It's scary.''
A relative bright spot on the Strip may be CityCenter, an $11.2 billion joint venture between MGM Mirage, the world's second largest casino operator, and Dubai World, a holding company for the government of Dubai. About 60 percent of the development's 2,647 luxury condominium and hotel-condo units are under contract, with $350 million in non-refundable deposits.
``Our product is different and we're selling real estate for future delivery,'' said Tony Dennis, executive vice president.
At Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport, the total number of arriving and departing passengers in August dropped 9.9 percent from a year earlier, when a record 4.3 million passengers went through the airport. Highway traffic declined 4.9 percent through July, the latest month for which figures are available, the visitors authority said.
-cont'd below-
