Reno's Nevada Club to close doors

Associated Press (Saturday, November 22, 1997)

RENO -- The Nevada Club, a 51-year-old landmark in downtown Reno, will close in January but a prospective buyer is in the wings.

Las Vegas based-Fitzgeralds Gaming Corp. on Thursday said the club will shut its doors on Jan. 18.

"I've been told the identity of the buyer is confidential," said Steve Trounday, marketing director for Fitzgeralds-Reno. Fitzgeralds said the company hopes to hire as many of the Nevada Club's 90 employees as possible for jobs at its hotel-casino across the street.

The company bought the club in 1988 and has tried to sell it off and on for the past seven years. Last year, Philip Griffith, Fitzgeralds chairman and chief executive officer, said he wanted to sell the Nevada Club because it did not fit in with the company's long-term planning strategy.

The closure would add to other smaller casinos that have closed in recent years. Harolds Club, located next door to the Nevada Club, was sold by Fitzgeralds three years ago and remains vacant. The Virginian Hotel Casino, located about a block to the south, closed earlier this year. Bob Cashell's Horseshoe Club across the street from the Nevada Club closed two years ago, but has since reopened as a pawn shop.

Besides Fitzgeralds in Reno, the company owns and operates hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and Tunica, Miss., and a casino in Black Hawk, Colo. It also manages a casino for the Yavapai-Apache tribe in Camp Verde, Ariz.

Trounday said Fitzgeralds is selling the small Reno casino to focus on its own brand, not because the club isn't profitable.

Griffith said that the Nevada Club, with only 400 slot machines and 10 table games and a diner, needed to be owned by a smaller company that could give it the attention it needs. "If there's anything wrong with the Nevada Club, it's us," he had said.

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