In Business Las Vegas, April 13th, 2007
PRIMM — The Primm Valley Casino Resorts have come full circle.
When Ernest Primm bought 400 acres on old
U.S.
91 near the Nevada-California border for
Las Vegas
would eventually be owned by one of the world's gaming leaders, then fall back into the hands of owners who shared the same family-business values he had.$15,000 in 1951, little did he know that the desert outpost 45 miles south of
But that's what has happened when Herbst Gaming Inc. and its Terrible's trademark took possession of the three Primm properties this week. With the closure of the MGM Mirage announced in November, the three properties —
Whiskey
Pete
's, the Primm Valley Resort and
Buffalo
Bill
's — became the new flagship of the growing Herbst empire.$400 million deal with
The official hand-off occurred in a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the porte cochere of
Buffalo
Bill
's, the newest of the three Primm properties, on April 10. More than 100 Herbst employees, many of them executives who flew in for the event from Northern
Nevada
and from the Midwest where the company has casinos in
Missouri
and
Iowa
, attended the event hosted by the company's top officers, who include brothers Ed, Tim and Troy Herbst.
Family patriarch Jerry Herbst, the founder of the company, also attended and made a few congratulatory remarks.
"We looked at this property 30 years ago," the elder Herbst said. "We knew there were a lot of cars going by, but we wondered how we were going to make them stop."
That doesn't seem to be as big a problem anymore since the Primm resorts have built a client base of loyal customers who prefer the small-town, everybody-knows-your-name feel of the resorts to the big
Las Vegas
shuffle. Over the years, the Primm properties have added a few magnets – an arena that hosts big-name entertainers at reasonable prices, a 200-foot roller coaster called the Desperado that once was the tallest and fastest in the nation and a shopping mall with big-name retailers in an outlet setting.
Now, Herbst has big plans to take the properties to a new level and will invest millions of dollars to upgrade the slot-machine floors, add new player-tracking technology and erect a massive sign with the familiar Terrible's cartoon cowboy.
Company leaders aren't disclosing how much they plan to invest in the properties, but Ed Herbst
, president of Herbst Gaming, said the improvements would be in by the end of the year.
"There's always going to be I-15 traffic and they'll always drive right by here," said Herbst, who said the company also plans a large cross-marketing campaign to draw players from its five Southern
Nevada
casinos in
Las Vegas
,
Pahrump
, Henderson
and Searchlight and from customers of the Terrible Herbst gasoline stations that play slot machines in convenience stores in 600 locations statewide.
Sean
Higgins
, who serves as general counsel for the company, said one of the advantages of the acquisition is that Herbst holds the Primm properties in such high regard, while when MGM Mirage had them, they were one of the smallest segments of the corporation.
"These properties were the small fish in a very large pond,"
Higgins
said. "Now, it's reversed."
Another big asset for the properties is its top local executive, Mike
Puggi
, who has taken on the title of regional general manager for Southern
Nevada
properties. In addition to overseeing the three Primm properties,
Puggi
is the top man for all the
Herbst
casinos in Southern Nevada except the
Las Vegas
location on Paradise Road.
Puggi
had the difficult decision of staying with MGM Mirage, one of the giants of the gaming industry, or joining Herbst.
"MGM has been a great company, so leaving them is bittersweet,"
Puggi
said. "If had been any other company, I probably would have stayed with MGM. But as aggressive as the
Herbst
family has been with its acquisitions and the way they treat their employees — it really is like an extended family — I decided to stay in Primm."
The family ownership style is much the way it was prior to MGM Mirage's tenure.
Ernest Primm turned the 400 acres he bought and another 400 acres he acquired a few months later from a two-pump gasoline station on the way to
Los Angeles
into a 12-room hotel called
Whiskey
Pete
's, named for a local character who owned the area for two decades.
Primm, who died in 1981, turned
Whiskey
Pete
's over to his son,
Gary
, who formed Primadonna Resorts Inc. The company built the Primadonna in 1990 and
Buffalo
Bill
's in 1994. In 1996, state officials changed the name of the community on the border from State Line to Primm, primarily because they wanted to avert confusion since there was another place called Stateline at Lake Tahoe.
Gary
Primm
negotiated a deal with his friend,
Kirk
Kerkorian
, to jointly build the $460 million New York-New York on the northwest corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, opening it just after New Year's Day in 1997.
In 1999,
Primm
sold the three border properties and his share of New York-New York to MGM Grand Inc. for $600 million.
With MGM in charge at Primm, Puggi said the three properties got some great back-of-the-house management experience and a lot of corporate support.
Now, with
Herbst
in control, the family feel is returning.
"I think most of the employees are really excited about the transition," said Shana Gerety, the properties' executive casino host.
"I'm really excited about the casino upgrades and having a better tracking system and I think our guests are really going to benefit because they'll be assured of getting what they deserve and earn when they're here."
