Sky bridge done, Atlantis looks at next steps

Within only a couple of hours after the

opening of the new sky bridge connecting the

Reno-Sparks Convention Center to the

Atlantis a few days ago, John Farahi was looking

toward the casino-hotel's next big projects.

Farahi, general manager of the Atlantis

and co-chairman and chief executive officer

of its publicly held parent company, says the

company's next big step will be replacement

of motor lodge units with another hotel tower

on the east edge of the Atlantis property.

Accompanying that construction, he says,

would be a multi-story parking garage.

When? That's a big question, as executives

of Monarch Casino and Resort, the parent

company of the Atlantis, want a better sense

of the direction of the gaming market before

they make any big bets on expansion.

Like others in the gaming industry,

Monarch has felt the effects of skittish consumer

spending. In the quarter ended Sept.

30, the company reported operating income

47.5 percent below the levels of a year ago.

While the new hotel tower and the parking

garage have been sketched in master plans for

the Atlantis, Farahi said the company isn't

putting any money into design of the project.

The motor lodge units that would be

replaced by the new tower are among the last

vestiges of the original Golden Door Motel

property purchased by Farahi's family in the

1970s. The property has been expanding

almost constantly ever since.

The company just completed a $50 million

expansion to the southeast corner of its hotel

and casino an expansion that cleared the

way for the $12.5 million sky bridge project.

The 650-foot sky bridge which

includes a 110-foot span over Peckham Lane

had been part of the master plan for the

convention center since 1995.

It couldn't be built, Farahi said, until the

Atlantis had expanded far enough to provide

an anchor for the sky bridge on the north side

of Peckham.

Engineering the sky bridge connection

into the Atlantis was fairly easy, because it

could be designed along with the 116,000-

square-foot expansion.

But the convention center needed to be

retrofitted to allow the connection, and that

work consumed about $4 million of the $12.5

project budget. The Atlantis paid the entire

cost of the sky bridge project.

Tying the meeting space of the convention

center to the new meeting space on the second

floor of the Atlantis, the sky bridge also is

configured for use for trade show displays.

The sky bridge is 18 feet wide inside, and

it's wired to handle the technology that

exhibitors brings with them.

Ellen Oppenheim, president and chief

executive officer of the Reno-Sparks

Convention and Visitors Authority, said it's

rare for convention facilities to be connected

directly to hotel facilities.

Meetings and conventions account for

about 17 percent of the tourism in the region,

Oppenheim said, and enhancements help

keep the RSCVA competitive.