Gaming Commission approves Hard Rock’s acquisition of The Mirage
The chief executive of Hard Rock International vowed Friday that the company will not close The Mirage as it guts the entire three-wing resort and invests billions of dollars to expand and upgrade the property.
“No. 1, it’s important for us to go on the record, 100 percent, we are not closing the building,” Hard Rock International President and CEO James Allen said in testimony Friday to the Nevada Gaming Commission, which approved the licensing of Hard Rock International to operate The Mirage.
“There’s no intention at this time to close the building,” Allen said. “We certainly are like any company. We will look at the construction schedule, we will look at the economy, whether there is or is not a recession and a year and a half from now or so probably would be the timeframe that we would evaluate what makes the most sense.
“But I want to go on the record, there is no closure. The last thing that we want is for 3,500 employees to have uncertainty and as a matter of fact, as I testified in the previous hearing, we’ve actually extended the Beatles ‘Love’ show,” Allen added.
Friday’s special meeting of the gaming commission was requested by Hard Rock to accommodate next week’s planned closing of the $1.08 billion sale of The Mirage from MGM Resorts International to the Florida-based Seminole Indian tribe, the owner of Hard Rock. The transaction is expected to close Monday.
“We are eager to finalize the purchase of The Mirage and look forward to welcoming the 3,500 team members to the Hard Rock family soon,” Allen said in a statement issued after the unanimous vote of approval.
Two hours of testimony
In a two-hour hearing that duplicated much of the testimony presented Dec. 7 to the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Allen said Hard Rock doesn’t expect to begin renovations on The Mirage until 2024.
“Our design and construction should be done sometime next summer, in that July or maybe August period,” he said. “From that time, it will take three to four months to bid the drawings.”
When the resort expands, Allen said, it will go from 3,044 rooms as The Mirage to 3,640 rooms as the Hard Rock; 836 slot machines to 2,000; and 51 table games to 212. The casino will be enlarged from 94,000 square feet to 174,000 square feet while the convention space will grow from 200,000 square feet to 283,000 square feet. The theater will go from 3,278 theater seats to 6,265 and 18 food and beverage outlets to 21.
Allen said Hard Rock will replace one iconic feature — The Mirage volcano — with another — an all-suites tower in the shape of a guitar. Allen said Friday he hopes the tower, which has yet to be approved by the Clark County Commission, would be between 600 and 700 feet tall but the company would follow whatever the county dictates. By comparison, the tower at Fontainebleau is 735 feet tall.
The guitar tower will have a rooftop pool and landscaping. Allen said there would be an infinity edge to the pool similar to the pool at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore “where you literally will feel like you’re swimming off the side of the building, but I assure you we will not allow the guests to do that.”
Allen said Hard Rock is working with MGM to find new homes, preferably in a natural environment and not as an entertainment attraction, for the animals currently housed at The Mirage. The property currently has a collection of dolphins, tigers and jaguars that were displayed in habitats and at the Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden attraction.
‘Love’ show extended
Allen also said the Hard Rock has signed an agreement to keep the Cirque du Soleil Beatles-themed “Love” show at the property.
BetMGM will continue to operate the race and sportsbook at the property.
When Hard Rock takes possession of The Mirage, the property’s loyalty club will change from MGM Rewards to Hard Rock’s Unity program. Allen said customers would not lose any of their earned points when the transition occurs and they’ll be able to be used at other MGM properties.
Allen told commissioners his company had the opportunity to acquire the former Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, but passed in favor of a Strip location.
The Hard Rock location that is now Virgin Hotels Las Vegas was operated by a different company that shared the name brand. The Seminole Tribe-owned Hard Rock only received contractual approval to operate gaming west of the Mississippi River in 2020.
Allen said the company did not steer Florida customers that spent an estimated $700 million annually on trips to Nevada to the other Hard Rock-branded properties, but will once the company completes the closing of the deal.
The city will now get a brand that has 300 locations in 70 countries with 50,000 employees that produce 30,000 live music events a year and is the largest owner of music memorabilia in the world. Allen said 140 million people patronize Hard Rock a year and in 2022, the company generated more than $6 billion in annual revenue.
Commissioners had few questions of the individual licensing applicants, which included several members of the Seminole Tribe seeking approval as members of the board of managers that oversees the subsidiary that will be operating the casino.
The five commissioners were impressed with Hard Rock’s philanthropic, diversity and inclusion efforts. Allen said the company lives the Hard Rock mottos of “Love All Serve All,” “Save the Planet,” “All Is One” and “Take Time to Be Kind.” Allen said celebrity musicians who have embraced the Hard Rock’s philosophies are not paid by the company, but they voluntarily participate in fundraisers through Hard Rock for a variety of charitable causes.
Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.
Some of James Allen's key testimony Friday
"We're not going to just put the brand on a facility and then change the carpet and put down our rewards program and say, 'OK, come to Hard Rock.' We had that opportunity countless times and, very politely, looked at so many different locations here in Nevada for quite some time. (We had) the opportunity to discuss The Mirage when Jim Murren was still CEO of MGM Resorts. We looked at land next to Circus Circus, there was something that was very appealing (about The Mirage) to us. No. 1, the size of the parcel. No. 2, its location, basically the 50-yard-line of the Las Vegas Strip. No. 3, I'm sure you're aware, is (we're at) the curve of the Strip. …
"The question is, can we create something iconic and what we want to do with The Mirage is iconic. We don't want to just do some renovation. We're working with local architects and designers. We've obviously been in front of the Clark County commissioners for quite some time. We want to build something that really takes The Mirage to the next level. …
"We all know its history when it opened back in 1989, how it was a catalyst for the Las Vegas Strip to take the next step as an entertainment destination. The name of the company is not Hard Rock Casino. The name of the company is Seminole Hard Rock Entertainment, because we look at this company as an entertainment company. Certainly this location is, we believe, the premiere location on the Las Vegas Strip. …
"Big picture, while we're very, very respectful of the legacy of the volcano and we recognize that as part of The Mirage of the past and we will not be continuing to operate the volcano once we commence construction. In its place will be one of our designs we refer to as the guitar-shaped hotel. That will be an all-suite hotel with its own entrance and, frankly, its own casino area and its own restaurants. It will connect to the main complex, specifically the main casino floor and all the entertainment aspects. The existing 3,000 rooms will not be renovated. I'm being a little facetious. They will be gutted. It's not a renovation of some carpet and maybe a little bit of money put into the bathrooms. It is a complete gut of the building. This is a monumental step and frankly, we looked at the building and did all kinds of forensic studies on the building, everything from the horizontal risers to the vertical risers. We complement MGM because the building really is in tremendous condition. The curtain wall, which is always a problem in structures that are approaching 35 to 38 years old, is in good shape. We want to be here for the next 20, 30, 40 years. Based on that, our capital investment is to completely redo it. All the landscape, all the poolscape will be completely leveled and rebuilt, including all the flow of the pools. …
"You're probably aware of all the dolphins, the tigers and two jaguars — we always forget about the jaguars. But that is part of The Mirage's past. Our purchase agreement says we will continue to work with MGM on a 50-50 basis to insure the safety and the protection of these animals and that they do not get placed in, for the lack of better terms, a tourist attraction. We want these animals as MGM does to live out their lives in an environment that is no longer the public gawking over them. We have multiple locations that we've been working for. We're not at the point of giving any specifics today, but I do think we're starting to narrow down and the goal is to have these become really a part of their natural environment where they end up. …
"As we look at the meeting and group space, we will be adding a new, roughly 44,000-square-foot ballroom on top of the existing meeting space. The casino floor building is a little older. It opened in December 1989 and still enjoys catwalks. Those catwalks take up a lot of the elevation in the building itself. As we all know, catwalks are no longer needed in the casino industry, so we actually have tremendous height on the casino floor and once again, we complement Wynn Resorts — at the time Mirage Resorts — because even the columns at the time were state-of-the-art. So we will completely gut the casino floor down to the concrete, rebuild it, rebuild all of the front-of-the-house areas and then a renovation of the meeting and group space. We should end up with around 200,000 square feet or so in the meeting and group space. …
"We'll keep the legendary villas. Certainly it's one of the great icons of Las Vegas. It's really fascinating that celebrities still like to stay there, but they do need an upgrade."
