Joe DeSimone
Joe DeSimone bought the Railroad Pass casino and hotel from MGM Resorts 10 years ago. He has spent that time upgrading the casino, adding hotels, truck stops and a new standalone restaurant, the Bullet Train. In the meantime, he bought a casino from Boyd Gaming in downtown Henderson he renamed the Pass Casino, and he’s also building a hotel there, the first for that neighborhood in Henderson. DeSimone was new to the casino business when he first started, but he’s now ramping up the gaming options at both properties. He spoke with GGB Publisher Roger Gros at his office in Henderson in June.
GGB: As someone who had never been in the casino industry before, what did you see in the Railroad Pass? Why were you interested, and how did the sale go from MGM?
DeSimone: My interest was that I considered the casino business as a kind of a sexy business for a young person at the time. And also a challenge. I wanted a change in my career, and that’s why it attracted me.
For MGM, it wasn’t a critical asset for them, but it was for me. They gave me a good price and they walked me through the licensing process. They were really good people, and they still are.
What did you see that you wanted to change immediately when you got in there?
I wanted to make a statement to the people of Boulder City and South Henderson, as well as the customers and employees. We immediately did a lot of improvements to the property. We painted it, we replaced the roof, replaced the air conditioning system. We redid the rooms; now I’ve just redone them again. So we wanted to make a statement that we’re here and we’re going to invest the capital. And we’re going have some fun doing it.
You also added a truck stop, a large convenience store with fast food, and a gas station. What was the thought behind that?
That experiment worked. If you park a truck at Railroad Pass, there’s not much in the way of options for food or accommodations. We have a casino with three restaurants, and we now have the Bullet Train restaurant. We also have entertainment and a sportsbook, and we have rooms. We have a separate menu for truckers, and they enjoy it. It’s kind of a captive audience, and it’s fun to see the same guys come through once or twice a week that are on different paths. So it’s been a good experience done very well.
Halfway through this process, you were able to buy the Boyd-owned casino in downtown Henderson and transform that into the Pass Casino. What was the thinking behind that?
Well, my first thought was economies of scale as it relates to my management people, whether it’s HR, security or maintenance. And it went a long way towards saving some costs, but also generating revenues with the multi-play card system from Aristocrat. We’ve invested a lot of money in the Pass and have exciting things happening there, too.
You recently removed table games from Railroad Pass. Why did you do that? Are you considering electronic table games?
The time had come. We had one pit of games for a very long time. It was a loss leader. There wasn’t much demand for the games—we just weren’t getting enough play. And the cost of running one pit with six tables is extremely high. We learned at the Pass, when we took the table games out of there, we saved a bunch of money and actually the slots picked up. The coin-in picked up, and so did our hold.
We’re still trying to figure out if it would help to add ETGs. I went over with my slot people today, which machines I wanted, and we’re getting pricing now.
