Aliante Station Opens With Fireworks Show

LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- As reported by the Las Vegas Sun: Rock singer Sheryl Crow, fireworks and a few thousand locals helped open Aliante Station late Tuesday night.

The $662 million hotel-casino opened
Aliante Casino will be offering tons of penny slots for its customers.  at 10:40 p.m., ahead of the scheduled 11:11 p.m. opening. Customers started gathering outside the property around 9 p.m., and many of them said they were hoping to get a little opening night luck at the machines.

Nearly 3,000 invited guests attended a pre-opening party, which included an hourlong performance by Crow. Party attendees included executives from other gaming companies: Palms owner George Maloof, MGM Mirage Chairman and CEO Terry Lanni and officials from Boyd Gaming Corp., Cannery Casino Resorts and Golden Gaming.

The hotel-casino opened with 202 rooms, 2,554 slots, 40 table games, a high-limit area and a poker room.

Station Casinos now has 4,250 hotel rooms at 11 properties around Clark County.

Aliante Station will be opening in a slumping economy and competing with several other nearby gaming properties, including three in its own family. Station Casinos properties the 200-room Texas Station, the 100-room Fiesta Rancho and the 200-room Santa Fe Station are within eight miles of the company's newest property, and company officials admitted the new resort could draw customers from them. Also, the 100-room Lucky Club Casino, formerly the Speedway, is 10 miles southeast of Aliante Station, along Interstate 15.

The 89084 ZIP code area in North Las Vegas where Aliante Station is based has been hit hard by the mortgage crisis, with 1,394 foreclosures, 48.9 percent of all housing transactions occurring in the 12 months ended Oct. 20.

The property, the first major hotel-casino to open in North Las Vegas in 5 1/2 years, will employ 1,400. The last resort to open in North Las Vegas was the $105 million, 201-room Cannery in January 2003.