How a 29-Year-Old Became a Vegas CEO | Jonathan Jossel DSH #1256

Speaker 1 Well but promoting downtown as a blank canvas right come downtown walk the streets oh and by the way you're gonna watch the killers imagine dragons uh some of the biggest bands in the world playing up you know in the streets of downtown and um what a better what better way to advertise the area to people so it was pretty amazing to see how that worked but as a business festival's a tough business

Speaker 1 All right, guys, got a Vegas local on today, Jonathan, CEO of the Plaza Hotel downtown. Thanks for coming on, man.
Thank you for having me. This is awesome.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 appreciate the setup over here. Appreciate the studio.
Yeah, I appreciate your time. I know you're quite busy with that role.

Speaker 1 Not really. I enjoy doing this stuff.
It's good to meet people in the community. Good to meet Vegas locals like yourself.
And

Speaker 1 that's how we get the plaza on the map by talking about as much as we can. I love it.
Yeah, you started as CEO at 29. That must have been a record for youngest at the time, I'd imagine.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was the youngest when not CEO, but gaming licensee.

Speaker 1 So to hold a gaming, to run run a hotel casino in Vegas you have to have a license I went through that licensing process and became the CEO when I was 29 years old that must have been a rigorous process I'd imagine you know what's funny is it is but when you're so young you don't have trusts and different

Speaker 1 investments and kids and all these other things that typically they would investigate so I didn't have other properties I was you know 28 when I saw the process so it was a pretty straightforward process but they still investigate everything your bank accounts i'm originally from england oh wow so you know you submit your bank records from the uk and they go through everything it took uh nine to twelve months nice i got citizenship out there in england yeah my dad was born there you've been out there at all been to ireland okay i need to get out to england though you got to use your citizenship i know well i i might have to claim it because he was born there so i don't know how it works but he said i could claim it whenever i wanted to oh you haven't claimed okay yeah that makes sense you should probably do that yeah if you want it if i want it yeah we're gonna go then well it's smart to beat america man you know i agree with you i was born in south africa grew up in london england been 17 years here in Vegas, and nowhere else in the world I'd want to be.

Speaker 1 Wow. And that's not just America.
Vegas is the best. You've seen a lot of growth.
It's a place to live in Vegas. Yeah.
It's mind-blowing. I mean, I've been primarily in downtown Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 To see the growth down there has been awesome. But as a city, it's just completely evolved.
And wow, is it just... only going to grow more in the next decade.

Speaker 1 Yeah, with the sports teams coming in, real estate. Yeah, real estate, sports teams, everyone in California wanting to move here.
Especially after the fires.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was happening before that, but even more so now.

Speaker 1 I feel like I'm speaking like the mayor now, promoting Las Vegas. But yeah,

Speaker 1 the growth is amazing. The development and just the diversity.
It just was only casinos. Now, you like you mentioned sports, but there's also tech moving here.
There's other investment companies

Speaker 1 here. Hollywood's here.
Mark Wahlberg's here. It's pretty diverse.
You're here. I'm here.
Social hours. I've been four years here, and it's been the best city I've ever lived in.
I'll say that.

Speaker 1 Where were you before? I was in LA for a bit. I was in Jersey City and Bridgewater.
Okay. New Jersey.
And you always wear your face on your shirt? Always. I just ordered new merch.

Speaker 1 How many things do you have left? I know. I have a hundred of these actually.
So people think I wear the same shirt every day, but I just swap them. Okay.
Well, I put on a tie for you today.

Speaker 1 I don't normally wear a tie, but. Oh, I'm honored.
No, I'm sure. I was at the gaming control board just after meeting.
I'm sure that was a fun meeting. It was a fun.
It was a great meeting.

Speaker 1 No, I just ordered a new merch, though, because people in the comments are like, is that kid wearing the same shirt every day? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I almost went full Mark Zuckerberg and just bought 100 white shirts. Why don't you? I feel like the branding's a better look than just white shirts.

Speaker 1 As long as they're just plain white shirts, not the Kanye West white shirts. Yeah.
Well, Kanye's been going crazy. I don't know if you've seen that.
I've seen it. Man.
Yeah. I'm Jewish.
I've seen.

Speaker 1 I'm sure all your friends are talking about it, Ben. All his tweets got deleted, right? He just deactivated his Twitter.
They should, as they should. Yeah.
Did you see a Super Bowl commercial?

Speaker 1 I actually missed that. I don't know how I was busy at the hotel, so I did hear about it, but I didn't actually see the commercial.
But I'm going to have to check it out after this.

Speaker 1 Actually, I don't really want to watch it. I want to pretend this guy doesn't exist.
It's horrible. Yeah.
Horrible. A lot of hate

Speaker 1 coming towards Jewish people, especially on X. Yeah.
Man. Yeah, although I think a lot of it is just the algorithm finds people.
So I don't see a lot of that, but it's definitely out there.

Speaker 1 It's a pretty scary time. How big was a Super Bowl event for you for the hotel? It was good.
Obviously, hard to compare it to last year.

Speaker 1 Last year, we had the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, so it was packed and a different type of busy. But Las Vegas is always one of the busiest.

Speaker 1 A Super Bowl is always one of the busiest times of the year in Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 top three i'd say it was very good it wasn't as busy as previous years there's a lot of rumors as as to or rumblings as to a lot of underperformance in in hotel rates and ticket sales for the parties but yeah i think it's pretty simple that the fires in california uh definitely put a dampener on the mood and and as it should i mean there's what i think 30 to 40 of the business that comes to us vegas comes from california wow and arizona i didn't know that those two states so when you consider that it's uh

Speaker 1 you know you take a huge chunk of that market out of it it's going to put a dampener on the mood mixed in with obviously a an uncertain political climate.

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Speaker 1 In some ways, and some people think it's the pricing on the strip has just gone out of control. And maybe that's an element, but that's not a new thing.

Speaker 1 The fires in California seem like a direct correlation to the slowdown in the last couple of weeks. Plus, stocks tanked that week.
Crypto market was down.

Speaker 1 Everything was, it was just bad timing all around, you know. Yeah, but it was still great.
We still did, we still did really good. Still want about better weekends.

Speaker 1 And the Monday after Super Bowl is always a great day as well. People forget that.
They think the game's the game is Sunday, but Monday after Super Bowl is still super busy. Really?

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't expect that. Yeah, it's great.
Thought people would be hungover and giving up on drinking. No, no.
So what happens is all the people that won all their big sports bets now gamble there.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is how.

Speaker 1 Speaking of gambling, I saw Vegas Poli C make a video about how the profits were down this quarter, 40% on the strip. For the year.
For the year. Oh, was it for the year? Okay.

Speaker 1 Where did you see that? Vegas Policy C. Oh, okay, fine.
Yeah. I feel like he's pretty accurate with his reportings.
Yeah, real sources of information. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, he's very numbers driven.

Speaker 1 He sure is. You got to give him.
I don't check his numbers, but I'm sure he is very accurate. You haven't banned him yet, right? I haven't banned him.
No, he calls me the next Steve Winns.

Speaker 1 How can I ban a guy who says I'm the next Steve Winner? It's wonderful. Because Resource World has banned him.
I saw that. Yeah.
I heard that.

Speaker 1 I think there's an element to how much you hate on a place and it's a tough industry. It's a tough thing.

Speaker 1 But he speaks his mind and I give him credit for that. And he's, you know, he's certainly entertaining.
People like what he's doing. And we haven't banned him.

Speaker 1 In fact, he comes and plays this game called Pop Craps at the Plaza.

Speaker 1 He loves craps.

Speaker 1 You know, unlike other influences influencers and other people we don't pay him we don't do anything he just comes there as his own as a customer and so it's i like getting real life feedback from customers so he gives me real life feedback and uh he's a good guy he's a good guy and uh like i said he calls me the next steve win so i can't hate him for that i love the was steve win someone you studied when you were starting out in this industry Yes, a lot.

Speaker 1 I mean, my one regret is I never got to work for him. I never got to learn directly from him.
I met him many times, dozen, 20 times or so, but

Speaker 1 over dinners and stuff. And And you realize how brilliant the guy was.

Speaker 1 So I studied him and tried to learn from him as much as I could without having the direct influence from him. But we had dinners and

Speaker 1 at dinner,

Speaker 1 he could express how good he or how knowledgeable he was about bingo. And we share a love of bingo.
We're the only game, we're only doing bingo in downtown. He started him in bingo halls.
Really?

Speaker 1 He could talk about wine. He could talk about art.
He could talk about sport. I mean, the guy was so intelligent.
He could talk about literally anything anything and eloquently, intelligently.

Speaker 1 It was pretty amazing to see. That's impressive.
Because as a CEO, you got to know a little bit about every single game you have at the casino, right? Right. But he knows a lot about everything.

Speaker 1 That was the one that stood out to me. I can speak a little bit about bingo.
And like, I'm passionate about all like American football. He can remember plays and games.

Speaker 1 He can remember, he called it, you know, to call a bingo game is a certain skill set. He explained to me and how.
B15, like the sound of your voice as you call out the game is a skill to that.

Speaker 1 And he went through a whole, he called a game bingo over at dinner one night. What? It was pretty super impressive.
It was pretty interesting.

Speaker 1 What was your biggest I guess takeaway from those dinners with him? What did you

Speaker 1 There's a few things, but he taught me the idea of cause and effect which is that you know casinos aren't

Speaker 1 or gambling isn't the effect

Speaker 1 it's it's the sorry isn't the cause. It's the effect.
The cause is everything that goes into the experience. It's the guest experience from the sight, the smell.

Speaker 1 He understood more than anybody else what people want. And he explained, once you give them that, they're going to spend more time in your casino.
They're going to play more of their wallet with you.

Speaker 1 And he really understood what people wanted more than anybody I've ever

Speaker 1 come across. And to be honest with you, you look at the strip today, the best properties are still the ones he built.
And that's, I was at Spargo last night. The fountains were going.

Speaker 1 There was tons of people watching it. He did that 26 years ago, and it's still relevant today.
It's still interesting today.

Speaker 1 You know, when you think about some of the newer developments on the strip they lack that brilliance and touch it not to say that they're not amazing they're beautiful they're nice they're amazing but but for whatever reason what steve win built people crave they came from all over the world to see it and uh some of that's lacking today i'd say maybe the sphere has that effect i you know yeah

Speaker 1 wherever you go in the world people are like the sphere is cool the sphere is interesting and people want to see it from all over the world i think that steve win had the ability to build things um that people gravitated towards felt comfortable in.

Speaker 1 And even now, the Wynn is the best property. You know,

Speaker 1 people can debate that, but the Wynn is the best property in the city. And it's because of him.
He built it. And so, yeah,

Speaker 1 he's a legend. A legend and very impressive.
And frankly, the guy who made the city what it is, if you really break it down. Yeah, and shout out to his nephew, Blakewin, who's a good friend of mine.

Speaker 1 He's been crushing it out here, too. That's right.
Isn't uh, he's partners with Oscar Goodman's,

Speaker 1 they work together. Yeah, on the celebrity poker tournament.

Speaker 1 yes yeah exactly they've been crushing yeah what they're doing is incredible yeah but yeah i agree with you i got win number one venetian number two okay yeah yeah venetian solid and they just did renovations hey no surprise that the two best operators in the history of the city steve win sheldon adelson built the two yeah yeah no surprise at all i mean people people build the right way they understand what people want and they give what they give people what they want it'll be successful uh long term so yeah he he he they were both maestros in different ways, but Steve Wynne really understood the human connection of what people experience from the sight, the smell, the taste, everything when you walk through that building, the customer service.

Speaker 1 Even now, the guys that are working there, they were all not

Speaker 1 still all of them, but many of them were trained by Steve Wynn, learned through Steve Wynn, and that's how it's able to continue some of that excellence.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the energy in that hotel, they've just done a phenomenal job of making you feel important when you're walking those halls. Yeah.
You know, I used to film my podcast at the Wynn. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 I felt like a savage every time.

Speaker 1 Was that the studio thing that they have there yeah it's next to the buffet yeah yeah have you seen that one i have yeah it's a five million dollar studio that's what i mean they just they're willing to invest well and who uses it now uh serious 6 m owns it now so they film their shows out of there okay but it was a different company

Speaker 1 yeah you should man get signed to serious where do you film yours now at the plaza yeah so we started a podcast five years ago at the bar in oscars oh yeah in the studio at the bar

Speaker 1 yeah and the idea was you know we'd have people come in have drinks whatever hang out

Speaker 1 and uh didn't think it was gonna last i think we've done about 140 episodes now. Well done, man.
Quite love for a podcast, right? It is. Not a lot of shows get to episode 10.
Right. I read that.

Speaker 1 I read most people give up long before that.

Speaker 1 No, we're at 140 and we've been able to, my goal with it is,

Speaker 1 I hope that one day people look back at a snapshot in time from like 2020 to the next decade of what was Las Vegas like and who told the story of the history of Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 So we've had historians on, we've had business operators. It's not a commercial for the plaza.

Speaker 1 It's really just a way to tell the story of Vegas, who's doing what we've had probably 10 casino owners on the on the podcast general managers people just in the industry and and then we've had you know local influences other celebrities but just trying to tell the story of the people that contributed to vegas for that period of time yeah maybe my kids will listen one day be a class at unlv i hope i hope with my kids they listen to a few my episodes too yeah you know legacy is important how old are your kids 20 uh i don't have them yet oh oh i was gonna say i'm getting married this year though so soon soon congratulations thank you um so casino owners have been on the podcast.

Speaker 1 So how do you view competition in Vegas? Is it pretty like your friends or like, is there actual competition with other casinos? You know,

Speaker 1 I really think of downtown as its own sort of submarket, right? I don't see us, we obviously compete with the strip in different ways.

Speaker 1 But on the whole, my main focus is with the other casino owners of downtown. I think they've all realized, along with myself, we're better if downtown's better.

Speaker 1 So the best thing that ever happened to the, one of the best things that ever happened to the plaza is circa being built across the street.

Speaker 1 In traditional logic, you'd be like, no, that's going to be competitive. That's not going to be good for you.
But it doesn't work that way in the casino world.

Speaker 1 Having that building across the street has meant more people coming downtown, higher spenders coming down, better quality customers coming downtown. And so it's changed the perception.

Speaker 1 Same as Golden Nugget, same as every property that's upgraded in the last decade has only helped downtown. The plaza has been one of the biggest reinvestment stories.

Speaker 1 We've done a lot with the property. So to see that come back, sure, we compete with each other for market share, But the idea is it's much more important that the market grows.

Speaker 1 And that's what's been happening in downtown is the market's been growing. More and more people coming downtown means that we do better as a result of that.

Speaker 1 And so that's really been the story I talk about as the neighborhood effect. Yeah.

Speaker 1 When you looked around where I was in downtown, call it a decade ago, you had a Greyhound bus station, you had the jail. Shout out to the people in the jail that are watching my fireworks shows.

Speaker 1 I didn't even think about that. That's cool.

Speaker 1 I learned that about 10 minutes ago. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You had a jail, you had the Greyhound bus station, you had the train tracks, you had empty parcels.

Speaker 1 Today, you have 800 apartments to the west, you have circuit to the east, you have the new parking garage. We were able to evict the Greyhound bus station.

Speaker 1 You have so much development and improvements that the neighborhoods truly cleaned up.

Speaker 1 I had read a stud in 89101, which was our zip code, was the poorest zip code in the state. Wow.
In the city. I didn't know that.
It was.

Speaker 1 I can't imagine it is anymore because of all the development and development and all these people living down there now has changed so much so yeah yeah you're you're you're part of a much better neighborhood your business is going to do better and so yes there's a competitive element no doubt about it but i think uh we all work together you know when we do our fireworks every friday the other casinos promote it because they want people on their patios their rooftops their pools to all experience it When Life is Beautiful used to happen, it was good for all the casinos.

Speaker 1 The F1, we did something called the Neon City Festival. Oh, I saw that.
We all worked together. We all brought new events together to make downtown a better place.
It benefits all of us together.

Speaker 1 So there's a, I'd say it's 10% competitive, 90%. Let's work together to make downtown a better place.
Yeah. Whenever my fiancé's family visits us, they prefer downtown over the strip.
Really?

Speaker 1 It's interesting. Yeah, it's great.
Because you never know what you're going to see there. Yeah, that's true.
I mean, there's still an education process.

Speaker 1 I talk to people when I'm out at restaurants on the strip and they'll be like, oh, downtown.

Speaker 1 But once they get down, they're like, oh, wow, this is not what I expected. It's cleaned up.
It's not grimy anymore. It's not.
So there's still elements of

Speaker 1 probably the crowds that you're referring to, but it's getting better and better every. And that's been my philosophy with the plaza.

Speaker 1 You know, we could have knocked it down and started again, but I was like, no, let's let's

Speaker 1 let's revitalize this thing one piece at a time and improve it. And that's what we do.
We went through every hotel room, every F ⁇ B opportunity, the casino, the entertainment.

Speaker 1 We have a new show there called Mavericks. Nice.
It's been amazing. I love it.
I'll check it out. You got to come see the show.
Yeah, I'm going to try the steakhouse tonight, too. Oh, cool.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I haven't been there.

Speaker 1 Have you been on the Zipline downtown i have i love it too there's the one where you sit in it and then there's the one you fly the flying one is what i'm talking about i haven't tried it i'm like scared man yeah you didn't get stuck i didn't get stuck but probably i'm too heavy so i kept fighting

Speaker 1 yeah i just kept going no i didn't get stuck what are your predictions for circus circus they just listed it for sale right i heard that um

Speaker 1 i i i imagine uh i i don't know i don't I'm skeptical that it actually sells. Although I did go in there.
There's this vending.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've seen these vending machines where you get sports cards and Pokemon. Oh, I saw it on Instagram.
Yeah, cards. I went in there to see one of them at Circus Socus.

Speaker 1 We have one at the Plaza as well. They're pretty cool.
You'll see it tonight at the Plaza. They are cool.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the property needs some new life and some new energy.

Speaker 1 I think, again, what I was just speaking about with downtown, if it got revitalized and re-energized, it would really help Fountain Blue, Sahara, Stratosphere, everything down the north end of the strip.

Speaker 1 But I also heard that they wanted 5 billions per hour. Five zooins.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of money to pay for something that I don't know what it makes, but it's it was pretty quiet the last time I went in there. Yeah, I will say I've been to their steakhouse.
It's not bad.

Speaker 1 They've got a good reputation for the steakhouse, but I feel like

Speaker 1 we used to have the same thing said about the plaza. We had Oscar's steakhouse, but there's no point having a good steakhouse if everything around it isn't the same or similar.

Speaker 1 It doesn't have to be as high end or as fine dining, but you got to be able to keep the people that are comfortable. You don't want them just to park, eat a steak, and then leave.

Speaker 1 That's not good for anybody as a business operator.

Speaker 1 So yeah, need some they need some tlc there although my kids love the um when you have kids one day you'll see they they love the adventure dome the place in the back of circus circus where the roller coasters are oh yeah all that stuff i could see that well they're they're old they were built in what the 50s 60s circus circus

Speaker 1 i don't know when that adventure dome was but that can't be that old i don't think but but the but the circus circus probably is the hotel yeah i think they're one of the oldest um but even yours was built in uh 71 right yes that that's one of one of the oldest it has to be it was built in 71 it was uh one of the largest largest hotel casinos in the world.

Speaker 1 So a huge amount of history. And what's really cool about it was that it was at one main street.
It was located where Vegas began. Wow.
First address in the city. It's on the back of the train tracks.

Speaker 1 If you've studied the history of Vegas and you've heard how the train used to come into the city

Speaker 1 and drop off the walkers for the Hoover Dam, that was the spot right there. That was the train, the Amtrak train station was at the plaza.

Speaker 1 And so we, that's where the plaza was built. That's where it's called the Union Pacific

Speaker 1 UPR

Speaker 1 is the Union Pacific Railroad, and it was called the Union Plaza when it was built. So that was 71, and then they added the second tower.

Speaker 1 So it's a thousand rooms and it sits on the biggest piece of land in all of downtown. It's 17 acres.
Wow. Biggest probably owned piece of land in the whole city, in all of downtown.

Speaker 1 I didn't know you guys had that much. That's impressive.
Yeah. Well, we have an equestrian center out there now.
Oh. It's like during the rodeo, we do rodeos.

Speaker 1 I'm definitely the only Jewish English guy throwing rodeos. Downtown has the biggest.
NFR is always a blast, man. I love NFR, man.
Best people, best time of year. It's fun.

Speaker 1 Best people, I'll agree with that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Those are the greatest, most pure and innocent people I've ever met. They love it.
They love it. They come to Vegas for 10 days and everyone has a good time.
Yeah. I went the first time last year.

Speaker 1 Oh, you did Thompson Mack? Yeah, Thompson Mac. It was on his act.
Every night sold out. Oh, my God.
There's nothing like it. I couldn't believe it.
There was more people there than like an NBA game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 it's a big deal. And by the way, those tickets are valuable.
People go nuts with them. Really? Oh, wow.
Shout out to Tyson Durfee for hooking me up. I didn't know they were valuable.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Those tickets are like gold dust that time of year. Everybody wants to go to the

Speaker 1 NFR. Yeah, I was excited for the bull riding, man.
Can you imagine what those guys do to themselves? Dude, I think the longest one I saw was five seconds. Those guys just fall off instantly.

Speaker 1 And then the bull attacks them. Yeah.
It's wild.

Speaker 1 So we throw our own rodeo as well in November called El Dorado. Oh, wow.
You have to come down to that. I'd love to.
It's fun. So we do that.
And then the NFR is in December.

Speaker 1 So we're having a question sent out there. We also had life is Beautiful there this last summer.
We did a festival out there. So we've got ideas for that 17 acres to develop it down the road.
Smart.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Life is Beautiful did really well, right? I saw that everywhere.
Life is Beautiful did well. It was a, it was for 10 years.
Tony Shea started it. He was the guy.

Speaker 1 He was the founder of Zappos and then invested in downtown and really did an amazing job, not running a festival, but promoting.

Speaker 1 downtown as a blank canvas right come downtown walk the streets oh and by the way you're going to watch the killers imagine dragons uh some of the the biggest bands in the world playing it you know in the streets of downtown and um what a better what better way to advertise the area to people so it was it was pretty amazing to see how that worked but as a business festivals are tough business and so when he passed away i don't think there was the appetite to continue running it the way that he he was yeah the vision that he had for downtown yeah they are tough i know we got the edc stuff here not as well but well edc is another animal it's the biggest festival one of the biggest festivals in the world and they have no problem selling tickets and they could probably sell no matter who was playing that festival.

Speaker 1 But that's that's a one-off as opposed to some of the other festivals. That makes sense.
Did you get the opportunity to learn anything from Tony Schech?

Speaker 1 I did a lot, a lot. I mean, I got to know him really well.
He

Speaker 1 amazing mind. And really what

Speaker 1 blew my mind about him was he just thought about everything a little bit different.

Speaker 1 You know, we all think of things in the same way. He interpreted everything in a different way.
And I remember sitting in a meeting with him

Speaker 1 and there was a bunch of downtown developers and owners and they were all talking about

Speaker 1 how do we communicate that downtown's different this is probably in 2012 2013 and he just sat there in silence listening listening and then finally said look it doesn't matter what you communicate if they come down here and the experience isn't good

Speaker 1 they're not going to come back and they're not going to talk about you're going to waste that that money and that really stuck with me with the hotel business as well like there's no point marketing something where you're not proud of the experience and you're not delivering on what you say you're going to deliver on.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he was spot on with that. And we've tried to carry that through with the plaza.

Speaker 1 But he told me a lot of things also just the idea of he was open to everything you know he never shut down ideas right away no matter how crazy they were or weird they were he listened he he processed it he thought about it and staying staying open-minded especially in today people are very close-minded oh yeah he was always open-minded listening and didn't always do it but at least would flush everything out and give it a chance and it's easy to just dismiss ideas but some of those are the best ideas that's true right steve jobs yeah it makes you uh it makes me wonder because you said you did renovations, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. So Tony might have played a role in that idea.
Yeah, we had done a few before that, and we had helped,

Speaker 1 he had really come into downtown about three years after I had moved out here, and we had worked together very closely to try to change a perception of downtown. And

Speaker 1 he was a big part of

Speaker 1 everybody increasing their appetite to improve downtown. And really, he...
He didn't actually do much, but he changed the perception real quickly. Everyone's like, oh, that's Tony Shea.

Speaker 1 He's doing this.

Speaker 1 And he had this book at the time called delivering happiness which is amazing book if you've not read it um i highly recommend it and he he invested in downtown and put downtown on the map in a much quicker way that would have otherwise happened yeah i'm a fan of downtown man it's cool isn't it like i'm not just saying that because you're here like you could have a fun night there and not spend too much money yeah and you could see all sorts of performances sometimes someone cools uh singing there Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 1 We're really proud of it. And I think there's a lot more potential.
You see, there's a high-rise being built down on Symphony Park right behind behind us.

Speaker 1 There's a new contemporary art museum being built by Elaine Wynne.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of good things happening down there. I just think that

Speaker 1 we've definitely made a big start, but there's a long way to go

Speaker 1 that downtown can continue to evolve into and become. And it's the gambling mecca, I think.
It should be.

Speaker 1 You know, you talk to Pauli C, but when you talk about better gaming odds, people want to have... their money last a bit longer, right?

Speaker 1 So instead of playing triple zero roulette, playing single zero triple zero, instead of playing six to five blackjack, you should be playing three to two blackjack.

Speaker 1 Instead of playing two times or three, four, five times odds on crap, you should be playing 10 times odds on craps. And a lot of people don't know that, but they feel it.

Speaker 1 They feel their money's gone much quicker. And I think that downtown has a chance to really stand out by differentiating on that.
Yeah, because you guys have lower minimums too, which is good.

Speaker 1 Lower minimums, but better odds. Yeah.
That's the key. Because if you go to the win on a busy night, oh my gosh.
$50 blackjack? $50 blackjack. I only gamble personally with like maybe 500 bucks.

Speaker 1 So like, I'm getting wrecked quick if I go there.

Speaker 1 You know, you go on a bad streak you're done right away yeah there's a couple of double downs yeah there's some good restaurants downtown too man it really is what's that italian spot out

Speaker 1 ester's kitchen i go there once a month ester's kitchen is great and they just moved to a bigger spot right they just moved about about a year maybe oh that was a year ago okay uh soul belly the barbecue place downtown is amazing couple of great steakhouses oscars went to pick and anthony's the other night at golden nugget very good uh yeah no there's great there's great restaurants downtown latai was my first project in town when i moved here.

Speaker 1 Oh, that was you? We did the yeah, we don't own Latai. We own the building.
Oh, okay. So we brought La Tai downtown.
I order that like once a month. It's great.
It's some of the best times.

Speaker 1 See the turnaround. But, you know, a lot of people always say to me, what's your favorite restaurant on the strip?

Speaker 1 I'm like, the best restaurants are not on the strip. Agreed.
Good restaurants on the strip. No, there are amazing restaurants on the strip.

Speaker 1 But if you say the best, I'm probably going off the strip right now. Yeah.
Well, if you ask a local bat, they're always going to say off-strip spots.

Speaker 1 But there are some great places and the experiences are pretty cool. Like you go to SW, you sit out there on the lake there and the show is great.
Yeah. But it's more than just the food.

Speaker 1 It's the whole experience, but just pure good quality food. There's some great places off the strip as well.

Speaker 1 Is there still that negative stigma around the old strip? Like, do people still think it's kind of grimy and stuff? I think Fremont Street, there is a little bit of that.

Speaker 1 And they've been challenged because it's a public street. It's really hard to control some of the elements that come out onto that street.
Some of the buskers are a problem.

Speaker 1 We've sort of taken the view of, look, people are going to come downtown to see Fremont Street experience because of the history, the neon, the light show, the zipline whatever it is but when they're done with that and for some people that might be three minutes because they're like no and for some people that might be an hour we want to create an environment where they can go afterwards like so we built uh the carousel bar pink box doughnuts an outdoor patio at our steakhouse all because when people are done with the fremont street they should be able to go to a place where they're like oh okay i'm removed from that it's crazy it's cool i saw it now they want to go somewhere else and so we've we've tried to elevate some of our experiences exactly for that and there's still an element of the griminess to the street, but it's getting better.

Speaker 1 That's good. And there's more places to go when you're done with it, whether it's the Arts District, East Fremont, the other casinos, it's tons of other places to go to.
I love it.

Speaker 1 Well, Jonathan, what's next for you? What's next for the hotel? Where can people keep up with you and watch the podcast and everything? So, our podcast is called On the Corner Main Street.

Speaker 1 We do it about once every two weeks. We release an episode, always obviously Vegas-related.

Speaker 1 I'm on Instagram at Jonathan Jarcell. I put my email out everywhere.

Speaker 1 i was i on twitter i talk to customers if they need anything with the hotel again it's you got to be gorilla marketing grassroots right you got to take care of one person at a time

Speaker 1 um and then you know for me i think we like i said we just scratched the surface on the plaza we're going to continue to remodel the hotel we're doing two new restaurants this year we're going to open up nice um last year we did the the carousel bar the pink box donuts uh the sand dollar bar was two years ago so we keep every year we take on new projects to upgrade the property and really longer term, we got that 10 acres.

Speaker 1 I'll show you tonight when you come down there. We are on the roof.
I'll show you an overview of some of our ideas of what we're thinking for that development.

Speaker 1 You know, taking the plaza, making the plaza the best place in downtown. Let's go.
Can't wait to stop by tonight. Check out the Plaza Hotel, guys.
Check out Jonathan's show.

Speaker 1 I'll see you guys next time.