The general manager of the Golden Nugget Lake Tahoe told gaming regulators last week that “every square foot of the property” would see some type of renovation during its latest redevelopment.

During a Gaming Control Board hearing in Carson City, general manager Jason Sides said the initial redevelopment phase had started on the 539-room hotel and 25,000-square-foot casino. One of the resort’s two towers has been taken offline so the improvements can be made, and he expects the first floor of renovated rooms to be available by October, just in time for the busiest months of the year.

“We have big plans for the property with a significant capital investment,” Sides told the regulators, but he did not provide a cost estimate for the project.

Following its purchase last year by Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta’s privately held Fertitta Entertainment, the property is now operating under its fifth name since its opening in the 1960s. 

Sides said a Salt Grass Steakhouse — one of several dozen restaurant brands owned by Fertitta — will open by the fall. He said Mastro’s Steak House, a high-end Fertitta restaurant brand, will also be added to the property.

On the Golden Nugget website, images show a renovated lobby area and room renderings. 

“You’ll see subsequent phases of other construction [throughout the year],” Sides said. “We’ve seen a nice surge of business and a lot of bodies [in the Tahoe market] in the past few weeks. So that’s good to see.”

A representative for Fetitta’s company declined to comment beyond what was said at the hearing. The renovations are expected to be completed by 2025. 

The resort has been known as Hard Rock Lake Tahoe since 2015. The Nugget is the last of the four Tahoe casinos visitors see along Highway 50 as they enter Stateline from California. The other three Stateline resorts are Bally’s Lake Tahoe and the Caesars Entertainment-owned Harvey’s and Harrah’s. 

Control board senior economic analyst Michael Lawton said the South Tahoe market saw its highest gaming revenue total in 2000 when it produced $352.6 million in gaming revenue.

Lawton said South Tahoe experienced a steep gaming revenue decline — and is almost 31 percent below its peak totals — during the last two decades due to the recession and competition from Northern California tribal casinos. In the last three years, the Sacramento area has seen the opening of three new tribal-owned casinos.

But there is hope the market will rebound.

According to the control board, South Lake Tahoe’s gaming revenue through May is 5.6 percent ahead of the first five months of 2023. Last year, the Tahoe market produced more than $243.8 million in gaming revenue, which was down 7.5 percent from 2022, but is more than 8 percent ahead of 2019, the last full year of gaming revenue for Nevada before the pandemic.

“We saw this as a great opportunity,” Fertitta told state gaming regulators a year ago. “We will take this property and totally transform it. And, as we always do, add the Golden Nugget name on it. We always expect it to be one of the top properties in the market.”

Investments beyond the casino floors

Tahoe has seen recent non-gaming investments.

The Golden Nugget is across from the $80 million Tahoe Blue Event Center. The 132,000-square-foot facility at the corner of U.S. Highway 50 and Lake Parkway will host conferences and concerts and will serve as the 36-game home hockey arena for the expansion ECHL’s Tahoe Knight Monsters.

On the California side of Highway 50, Orlando-based Margaritaville Resorts transformed the 399-room, non-gaming Lake Tahoe Resort Hotel into Margaritaville Resort Lake Tahoe. The renovation gave the location a Key West-style theme at the base of the Heavenly Mountain Ski Resort and adjacent to the casinos just across the state line.

The property is Fertitta’s third Golden Nugget in Nevada, along with resorts in downtown and Laughlin. Fertitta’s company also operates Golden Nugget hotel-casinos in Atlantic City, Biloxi, Mississippi, Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Cripple Creek, Colorado.

Fertitta’s company gained preliminary approval from the control board Wednesday to finance part of last year’s acquisition of the property. The Gaming Commission is expected to take up the matter on July 25.

“Basically, Tillman Fertitta is getting paid back for his initial investment in the project,” said control board member George Assad. “It’s a pretty simple transaction, but just a lot of legal jargon.” 

Fertitta announced an all-cash bid for the Hard Rock Lake Tahoe in March 2023, buying the operation from Paragon Gaming. Five months later, the deal was approved by state gaming regulators and the property took on the Golden Nugget name. The property had hundreds of music memorabilia items that were returned to Hard Rock.

The property opened in the 1960s as the Sahara Tahoe. It has also been known as the High Sierra Resort and Lake Tahoe Horizon. 

Fertitta Entertainment also has plans to build a 2,420-room, 43-story hotel-casino on 6 acres at Harmon Avenue and the Strip that it acquired in 2022 for $270 million. In May, the company said it was asking Clark County for permission to connect the planned resort to a pedestrian overpass bridge.

The company owns the NBA’s Houston Rockets and its Landry’s hospitality division includes a restaurant segment with roughly 520 outlets and entertainment attractions.

Fertitta, who is a cousin of Red Rock Resorts CEO Frank Fertitta III and Vice Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta, has also owned a 6.1 percent stake in Wynn Resorts since 2022 as a passive investment. He is the second-largest individual shareholder in the company behind Elaine Wynn.