Poker Writer
Eastside Cannery, a casino on the outskirts of Las Vegas, will be demolished after more than five years of inactivity. The casino never reopened after the nearly two-month Nevada-wide shutdown of casinos due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Now, the 17-year-old property will meet the wrecking ball.
Boyd Gaming, which owns and operated the property, revealed it plans to sell the land. It will become a housing development.
The casino operator, which owns a slew of properties around Las Vegas, announced its plans to the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
It has been more than five years since we closed Eastside Cannery, and there is not sufficient market demand to reopen the facility. Given this, we are finalizing plans to demolish the building. We are currently in discussions to sell the site for residential use.
According to a report from Vital Vegas in April, there was simply not enough demand to reopen Eastside Cannery. Boyd Gaming wanted to ensure that no competitor could open a casino in the same area of the city, given that Sam’s Town was already there, providing a reliable presence for Boyd. The two properties sit a mere half mile away from one another.
Thus, the sale includes a clause that the new buyers can’t open a casino on the land.
Boyd Gaming acquired Eastside Cannery in 2016 for $230 million and was still paying upwards of $500,000 a month to maintain it while closed.
The casino is located in the Southeast part of Las Vegas, between Paradise and Henderson. Opened in just 2008, it was one of the newer properties in the city. Several commenters on the Reddit news page expressed surprise that such a fresh property will go to waste even as more dated ones continue operating profitably.
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Eastside Cannery once had a poker room that featured up to four tables. The most recent reviews about the Eastside Cannery poker room dated all the way to 2014, so it didn’t appear to be heavily trafficked.
The closing of Eastside Cannery’s poker room and the casino as a whole follows a well-established pattern from recent years. COVID-19 shrank the number of gambling and poker options in the city, but the ones that remained have largely seen their business increase.
Like Eastside Cannery, Poker Palace Casino announced a recent closure. The North Vegas casino for locals shuttered its entries for good on Oct. 1.
With the end of Eastside Cannery, just one remaining casino in Nevada that closed during the pandemic remains closed: Colorado Belle in Laughlin. Locals hope that it does not meet the same fate as Eastside Cannery. They’ve established a Facebook page dedicated to bring attention to the casino in an attempt to try to get the property reopened. The group’s description received 390 likes and reads:
It’s long past time to reopen the Colorado Belle. The community has to come together and (to) make some noise. It is the most interesting building on the river and it is a complete waste letting it sit there.
