Out of the Woods

ou can see many things in Las Vegas

Ybut only at the Silverton Casino Hotel do they include mermaids. The finny vixens entertain customers in the resort’s Mermaid Restaurant & Lounge. And only at the Silverton will you find a 117,000-gallon salt water aquarium filled with rays, sharks and fish from around the world. Nor, for that matter, will you see anywhere else in Vegas something quite like the Shady Grove Lounge, where tipplers can relax beneath a North American Aspen tree or step into an adjacent Airstream trailer that cossets a miniature bowling alley. It’s all part of the off-kilter sensibility that has endeared the Silverton to locals and drive-in customers alike.

Fiercely independent in an era preponderant with mammoth casino chains, the Silverton is the brainchild of Los Angeles entrepreneur Ed Roski Jr. In 1989 he purchased 80 acres south of the Las Vegas Strip, aiming only to build an industrial warehouse. But he had a brainwave and a casino was born. It opened on May 20, 1994, as the Boomtown and was anything but. It struggled and Roski eventually bought out his associates, evidently (and rightly, as history has proven) thinking he could do better by himself, renamed it the Silverton...and a cult classic took shape. Over the years Roski has expanded the Silverton incrementally to add retail (Bass Pro Shops, 2004), a sports book (2012), dining (Nevada’s first Cracker Barrel, 2016), residences (The Berkley, 2016) and additional hotel inventory (Hyatt Place, 2019).

Very aggressively themed along Old West lines in its early years, the Silverton has dialed back the woodsy decor and kitsch-laden, hayseed vibe in favor of something subtler and more cosmopolitan, as befits a casino with a strong Asian-American clientele. By the way, fans of German rapper Capo are unwittingly familiar with the Silverton as he shot a 2017 music video at the resort, which continues to change, evolve and refresh without losing sight of what makes it distinctive—as Director of Marketing Sheila Kercher explained to us.

What are the pluses and challenges of being an independent casino in chain-dominated Las Vegas?

Right off the bat, one of the pluses of being an independent casino is that we don’t have a lot of corporate structure or people above us to direct us on what we’re doing. We get to do a lot of our ideas and concepts daily without people telling us what to do. On the opposite end of that, one of the challenges is that I don’t have as big of a marketing budget as maybe Station or Boyd, because they get to spread their marketing budget across eight to 10 properties. They get to do a lot more let’s say commercialize and have more buying power. But as far as being an independent casino, I think that we’re able to do really unique things that we can move real quickly up the ladder and execute them without much resistance.

What’s your locals/tourists customer mix?

We’re definitely a locals casino. I’d say we’re about

70/30. So we’re 70 percent locals and the other 30 percent of that comes from our drive-in market in California and Utah.

What about Silverton appeals to each of those segments?

If I look at our drive-in segment, you always think that non-local people or tourists to Las Vegas come maybe three to four times a year. Our California base probably comes every month. That’s because we have really great offers. We sent offers to them every month. There’s always a reason for them to come in and we’re a really easy destination for them to get into. We’re right at the beginning of where you get into Vegas. We’re one of the first casinos you can hit. We’re right off the freeway, it’s really easy to get in and out of. And that is really what appeals to our California base.

How do you differentiate your casino floor from others in town?

In the past couple of years we have really done an amazing job of bringing our floor up as far as bringing new games in. For a while we were a little bit stagnant. Four or five years ago we didn’t have a lot of the upand-coming games, the games that are themed out, like Game of Thrones or Billionaire. With the addition

of our new vice president of gaming, Ray Anazvino he’s done a great job of modernizing the floor. When you walk in the floor lights up. It’s nice to see. It’s not just a dark, dingy poker house. We have a lot of really fun games. We’re big on Buffalo and Lightning Link. That attracts a lot of people.

Do you still have the high-limit room?

We do but, to be quite honest, with the popularity of the Lightning Link and Buffalo lounges, which we have lounges for each one of those, a lot of our high-limit players play in those lounges instead.

What are your bargain propositions for players?

As far as pay tables, I assume we’re getting more towards video poker and although we do have a good video-poker base here, I think that the people really come here for the Lightning lounge and the Buffalo games. We have, quite honestly, one of the largest Lightning lounges—and I think the only one left—in Las Vegas and we have that Buffalo room, and I think that a lot of the locals really like coming in and playing those versus our video poker. It’s OK but a lot of our locals like to chase that progressive on those two big machines.

You have amenities like the giant aquarium that aren’t intended to drive revenue. What motivated these and how do they set the Silverton apart?

If you look at the other hotels in Las Vegas, they’re not—outside of the Strip—a lot of local hotels that have attractions, like our big aquarium. That’s something that was purposely put in, even though it’s not a revenue-generating area, it’s meant to be something to talk about. It’s meant to be something that makes us different and it definitely has done that for us for at least the past 10 years. I think we’ve won “Best Locals Attractions” every year because of the aquarium. It’s also having a little, kitschy bowling alley in the bar that people remember. You can get a drink anywhere in Vegas but people remember the little things that made you special, like that bowling alley.

What are the demands of maintaining a salt water aquarium filled with exotic creatures?

Oh gosh, it is definitely a large undertaking. We actually produce our own salt water here. It is quite a production back there. We maintain roughly over 2,000 fish. What makes that aquarium very unique is that a lot of the fish were cultivated over the different parts of the world. In the wild some of the fish would have never seen the other fish that are in there because they’re not in the same region. But we gone to great lengths to get fish that are both attractive and work well together in the aquarium, to own make our own special, unique aquarium.

What determines your restaurant mix and which are your most important dining spots?

So we have four restaurants that we own here plus our outlet with Johnny Rocket’s. Right now we don’t have our buffet open. That day is yet to come in 2022. But I would say that our important dining here, you might be surprised, is actually our world-class food—Asian. It’s called WuHu Noodle and it does really well. The guests really like it. I think it’s because it’s a quickservice venue. A lot of our clientele here tends to be Asian. It’s almost like a comfort food for them.

If you have a largely Asian clientele, do you have to do special, culturally aware things to appeal to them?

We try, with a large Asian population, to be diverse. It’s hard to put in one specific thing but we do cultural things like around Chinese New Year. We try to incorporate Filipino concerts. One of the biggest things about WuHu Noodle being so popular is because it’s authentic to being Chinese food. We have have a very authentic chef in there. So I feel like we do a better job of appealing to all the different segments that are the Asian population.

You’re a stone’s throw from Bass Pro Shops. Is there synergy between outdoor-oriented retail and the Silverton’s former woodsy theme?

Back in the day, when we were more of a lodge theme, they played really well and it made a lot of sense to bring in Bass Pro Shops. Before they opened their California store, this was the largest and busiest store that they had in the nation. So it was a great partnership for us to undertake. We got a lot of people who visited Bass Pro Shops who thought maybe the Silverton was attached to it and vice versa. We get a lot of traffic from them.

Have you made any recent expansions or do you plan any for the near future?

The biggest renovation that we’re going to do is we’re going to be renovating our hotel in 2022. All 300 rooms will be renovated and will have a fresh, new look to them.

For those customers who haven’t visited the Silverton or are possibly unaware of it, what would your message be?

One of the favorite things that I get from people who have visited us for the first time is that they always tell me that they’re surprised when they come inside and that it looks nothing like what they expected when they looked at the exterior of the building. Again, the exterior still looks very lodge-y. The way you come inside is very modern. In the past 15 years we’ve done a lot of upgrades to the building so it’s not so

lodge-looking anymore. You wouldn’t even put the two together, I guess, if you were standing outside and inside. A lot of the clientele will tell you that they always feel very at home here. Our staff are very friendly. Everyone likes to come here because they feel very close to our staff and our staff cares very much about our guests, and so if you’re looking for that more-intimate experience where you’re not in a big, large Las Vegas casino, that’s what we cater to.