Saturday, September 04, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JANE ANN MORRISON: Often-renamed San Remo resort seeks renaissance with Hooters label

Sporting seven names over 30 years, the San Remo Hotel and Casino suffers from a major identity problem.

The place is so obscure that a scientific newsroom poll of four people showed three couldn't describe its location accurately.

But can that problem be overcome with the help of big bosoms and tight short-shorts?

After all, ice cream, nickel beer and a short-lived gay marketing plan failed to make it the place to see and be seen.

Thirty years ago, the resort originated as a Howard Johnson's motel. Ice cream was the draw then.

It went from Ho-Jo to the Paradise, then the 20th Century Hotel, then the Treasury, where nickel beer failed to save it from bankruptcy. It transformed from the Pacifica to the Polynesian to the San Remo.

In the fall of 2005, it will receive its eighth appellation: Hooters Casino Hotel.

Therapy for a tired resort: A new name suggesting fun and frivolity and a pot of money to freshen it up.

Will Hooters pull it off, so to speak?

Sometimes it seemed the property at 115 E. Tropicana Ave. had more potential owners than customers.

In the early 1980s, former New York Jets football player Gerald Philbin wanted to market it as "All American," saying he wanted it to be family oriented. (Then he couldn't get licensed because of another All-American problem: He was the subject of a federal Strike Force investigation.)

For a six-week period in 1985, the property was touted as taking an innovative marketing approach: It was to be the first Las Vegas hotel to market to the gay and lesbian crowd.

Except it wasn't to be. A dogged gaming reporter (me) did a records search showing that the idea man behind that plan was a lawsuit magnet unlikely to be licensed.

Then in 1988, Japanese businessman Sukeaki Izumi expressed interest in the hotel.

"I was introduced to Mr. Izumi, and I did everything in my power to convince him it was a bad move," San Remo Executive Vice President Michael Hessling said. That part of the Strip wasn't developed, and none of the hotels down there -- the Marina, the Hacienda and the Tropicana -- did well.

"He bought it, and we've never looked back," said Hessling, who was the San Remo's first employee, hired by Izumi as the general manager.

Dwarfed by the Tropicana hotel-casino to the west and later by the MGM Grand across the street, the San Remo struggled to find its niche as it grew to 711 rooms and 600 employees.

"The San Remo had no real identity," he said. "We've competed based on location and value."

He laughed that one brilliant management move "was to sit and watch the MGM Grand get built across the street."

"We've always made money but never made money to reinvest," Hessling said. "We knew what the place needed but didn't have the resources to do it."

By bringing in capital from the Hooters partners, the place adopts a brand name that promises good times and will have the money necessary to freshen up the tired property by redoing rooms and public areas.

The Izumi family will join with partners from Hooters to give the resort an identity, at last.

Hessling, who will be a minority owner in the new partnership, exudes confidence about the future.

Hooters Hotel Casino will go after the "beautiful people" on the nightclub circuit as well as the Middle America customers drawn to Hooters' burgers, beer and breasts.

Dan Marino, the former Miami Dolphins quarterback, will open a restaurant. "If Marino is there, Shaq O'Neal is going to be here, and that's going to bring in some of the people who want to be in that scene," Hessling said.

Dealers and cocktail waitresses won't be wearing Hooters apparel but, Hessling said, "The Hooters girls will be part of the whole project."

People are going to know where Hooters Hotel Casino is, he predicted confidently.

Hessling said that about three years ago, he attended a meeting of gaming executives. When the San Remo was mentioned, Steve Wynn asked, "Where's that?"

Hessling explained that the San Remo was the first Las Vegas resort to be named after an Italian resort village.

Wynn, creator of the Bellagio, was not amused, Hessling recalled.

But Wynn's point was made. Even a guy who's been here as long as he has didn't know where to find the San Remo.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.