After months of legal squabbling regarding the status of the incomplete Harmon Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, a process to dismantle the property is now underway.
MGM Resorts International (MGM), the owner, announced workers have started removing scrap metal and other materials from inside the Harmon tower after a judge issued an order on May 5 allowing the process to move forward.
That’s after a couple of years of legal motions by MGM and the builder, Tutor Perini Building Co.
The hotel was part of the $8.5 billion CityCenter complex that opened in 2009. But construction of the Harmon was halted in 2008 after inspectors found flaws in the steel reinforcements of the concrete structure.
Lawyers for the property insisted the unsound building is a safety hazard and should come down while the builders fought to be permitted to reinforce the steel and complete the building.
A September trial will be held to determine who is liable for the defects.

With estimates of as much as $500 billion Euros (about $678 billion U.S. dollars), gambling on the World Cup in Brazil has been tabbed as “the biggest single gambling event of the decade” by Global Betting & Gaming Consultants of the Isle of Man.
“And each World Cup gets bigger,” said Warwick Bartlett, Consultants’ CEO who noted the occasion that comes around every four years is a bonanza for illegal bookmakers.
“The propensity to gambling in Asia is stronger than anywhere else on the planet, yet there are few legalized gambling opportunities,” he explained to AP business writer Kelvin Chan.
A handful of Asian jurisdictions in places like China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, South Korea, The Philippines, Japan and Taiwan, offer legal sports betting in government monopolies. But, it is banned outright in many other countries, including India, Indonesia and Thailand where thousands of illegal online bookmaking outfits currently operate.
In recent weeks, Chan pointed out, there have been a number of police forces cracking down on illegal gambling. Not only have arrests been made but police officials have confiscated millions of dollars from the illegal operations.
In Thailand, where a business group estimates Thais will spend $1.3 billion on illegal gambling during the World Cup, police have set up a gambling “suppression center” and arrested dozens of gamblers and bookmakers.
Yet, the arrests represent only a fraction of the amount of illegal gambling going on, officials say.
As for the chances of game fixing at the World Cup to benefit illegal bookmakers, they are very slim, indeed, says Patrick Jay, director of trading at the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
“Organized crime has moved into football (soccer) because they have seen that this is a much easier way to make money than the traditional ways of racketeering, prostitution, drugs, etc.,” said Jay, but the chances of that taking place in World Cup play are unlikely.
The reason, he said, is because game fixers target games with low media and fan interest involving poorly paid players.
“There’s no doubt the match fixers will look at those games. However, FIFA, EUFA and Interpol are all over this now.” Their investigators are in the dressing rooms, in the stadiums, in the hotels and they are even liaising with bookmakers, Jay added.

PokerStars, the world’s dominant operator of online poker sites, was banned for two years from applying for a license when New Jersey opened the door to intrastate Internet gambling earlier this year. But, should the sins of the former company owner be carried forward now that a properly license Canadian company is taking over?
That is the situation facing the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, which is being petitioned by Amaya Gaming Group of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, for licensing consideration after having paid $4.9 billion for the parent company of PokerStars and Full Tilt.
The latter two companies and their operators were cited by the U.S. Justice Department for cash transaction violations while encouraging poker players in this country to violate laws banning such gambling activity. Some of the indictments were resolved with the payments of fines while others against company owners still exist.
But that was the past. This is the future.
David Rebuck, the Division’s director, told Wayne Parry of the Associated Press last week that “we’ve had discussions with Amaya to reactivate the application for licensing.” He said he was encouraged by the sale of the company and the licensing talks.
“I think in the long run it will be a good story for New Jersey. I’m optimistic that they know what the rules are, and I fully expect them to be very aggressive because they want to be here.”
And they probably will want to be in Nevada…and Delaware…where Internet poker is being conducted, and in California and every other state that is considering changing their gambling laws.
The move in New Jersey is not by an unknown company. Amaya has already been approved for Internet gambling operations since its platform is being used by Caesars Interactive.
Rebuck said he could see Amaya getting approval to operate PokerStars in New Jersey by the fall.
The major provider of Internet poker facilities in Nevada is Station Casinos’ Ultimate Gaming. Whether Amaya sees sufficient poker volume in Nevada may determine its future here. Then again, there’s also the possibility of the California link.

Hardly a glance was given at the little town of Rensselaer, New York, when casino developers started making plans for the four casino licenses put up for grabs by state lawmakers. But, my, how that has changed.
In just a few short weeks, a casino proposed by Hard Rock Hotel & Casino to be built at DeLaet’s Landing on the Hudson River has been developing momentum.
“Nobody gave the city of Rensselaer a chance,” Mayor Dan Dwyer told timesunion.com. “I’m happy we pulled it off.”
Well, they still don’t have a license for the $150 million to $200 million facility to be built on a 24-acre site, where Rensselaer High School once stood. But that could be in the works.
“I believe we will be successful and hope New York State will select us,” said Jim Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International, the development division for the Seminole Nation’s gaming expansions.
But, Rensselaer has competition for the license. Others seeking it are developers who have chosen sites in Schenectady, East Greenbush, Schoharie County and a location at Thruway Exit 27.
This will be one of four licenses authorized by the recent gambling expansion law.
Proponents have until the end of the month to file their plans.

Gov. Brian Sandoval’s appointment of Las Vegas physician Tony Alamo Jr. to the chairmanship of the Nevada Gaming Commission has already jump-started speculation about the shape of things to come when lawmakers get to Carson City for the 2015 session of the Nevada Legislature.
Peter Bernhard said he is leaving the chairman’s post June 30, to give his successor time to consider gaming’s legislative needs.
People familiar with some of the issues that are sure to get close attention tell me the Nevada Resort Association will probably again be used as the vehicle to finish putting restricted licensees “in their place,” that is, into the smallest possible space in terms of their use of technology to compete with larger licensees such as Boyd Gaming and Station Casinos.
Convenience is a great marketing tool. However, some major resort strategists see a problem with the kind of convenience that discourages customers from even walking in the front door of a bricks and mortar casino with all the bright and shiny attractions that prompt spending.
There was a time when casinos marketing to tourists and those looking to embrace the interests of locals seldom got in the way of each other. But the recurring disputes in Carson City and before local officials about issues such as the so-called Dottie’s business model make the point that times have definitely changed.
NRA spokesmen reminded legislators in 2013 that the millions necessary to create a resort worthy of unrestricted status has for years been rewarded with access to more gaming than a neighborhood sports bar might offer. That’s the way it has been since the beginning of time, so to speak.
The myriad forces that have shaped the NRA’s point of view and then help sell it to regulators and policy makers want all the legislative action they can get to help shape statewide limitations on the business strategy of restricted licensees.
As for other matters of interest, there will probably not be a renewal of efforts to open the door to registered private groups that want to make sports bets. “That’s pretty much already possible now without getting gaming regulators involved,” sources close to this subject confided.
Sports betting will get added attention if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear New Jersey’s appeal of federal court rulings that bar sports wagering in the state. The High Court’s decision may come in the next week or so. (Editor’s Note: On Monday, after Mr. Hevener filed his story, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case and let the lower court ruling stand.) Legislators would almost certainly be tempted to update Nevada’s approach, if sports betting becomes legal elsewhere.
And it will become legal elsewhere if the court reverses the prohibition included in 1992 legislation.
Former Control Board member Randy Sayre has previously urged the legislature to exploit Nevada’s uniqueness as the only state offering a mostly unrestricted approach to sports bets. Lawmakers fell short of doing that last session when Control Board Chairman A.G. Burnett warned of waving “red flags” in the faces of federal investigators.
The expanded sports betting proposal got a lot of attention in 2013 because of the interest expressed by out of state funds intrigued by the notion of wagering on sports the way they might bet on commodity futures or whatever.
Neither is there any sign of a renewed interest in pushing for racebook rebates. The influences that know how to make things happen have apparently spoken. They see rebates as an effort to prop up a dying industry. But so many things can happen before the next session begins.
Not made in Japan? The slow progress toward legal casinos has all the twists and turns of a mystery novel…a very slow-moving novel.
The Diet (legislature) has adjourned but people familiar with what’s happening say the discussion of casinos began just in time last week to guarantee the issue will get further attention when the Diet’s fall session begins in October.
Opening anything in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is another story, unless there is a willingness to use temporary facilities, a not uncommon practice in some U.S. markets.
As recently as a week or two ago many followers of the casino issue were convinced it was too late to guarantee the necessary first step toward legalization could be completed this year.
When the recipe for change includes liberal doses of back room politics, the passion of special interests and a lot of money just about anything can be expected.
Major Las Vegas-based companies have been spending a lot of time in Japan as the issue’s evolution continues. Japan has been described as the last major untapped Pacific Rim market.
Mainland China would be nice but that is not going to happen any time soon. Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn are generally seen as favorites to get approval – if legislation is in place, but MGM and even Caesars Entertainment (despite its debt issues) have been projecting optimism for whatever it is worth.
A Caesars insider confided, “We have some good friends for whom money is no issue and this is an opportunity that’s worth an all-out effort.”
But wait a minute…is there any guarantee Japan might not slam the door in the face of all this non-Japanese casino expertise? Unlike Macau and China, there are a number of wealthy Japanese for whom casino operations is not exactly a foreign concept.
As one Japanese insider told an interviewer, “We don’t need them (foreign interests), we can do this ourselves.”
It’s an attitude that may produce some interesting partnerships once legislation and regulations are in place.

Tough luck, New Jersey! Action by the U.S. Supreme Court killed any hopes the state had of overturning federal law and introducing sports wagering on professional and college sporting events.
On Monday, the court let stand a ban on sport betting by supporting a lower court decision that struck down New Jersey’s sports betting law because of the federal prohibition. There was no further comment from the high court.
New Jersey, led by Gov. Chris Christie, appealed the federal ban, arguing New Jersey was trying to limit illegal sports wagering and capture some of that money for the state treasury. It was estimated as much as $500 billion is wagered illegally on these sporting events each year.
But, back in 1992, Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act that restricted such wagering to Nevada and three other states.
In an appeal before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, New Jersey’s position was opposed by the professional leagues and the NCAA, who were joined by the Obama administration. The judges voted 2-1 to uphold the law while a dissenting jurist wrote that he felt Congress exceeded its authority in limiting sports wagering.