Henderson casino owner Joe DeSimone reached out to Red Rock Resorts last year to see if the company was interested in selling the closed Fiesta Henderson.

“They weren’t receptive,” recalled DeSimone, who operates Railroad Pass on U.S. 95 and The Pass Casino on Water Street. “I think they just kind of just wrote it off.”

Tim Brooks, who operates the Emerald Island and Rainbow Club casinos on Water Street, said he didn’t have an interest in buying Fiesta Henderson. However, he believed the longer the hotel-casino remained closed, “the less chance there was that it would ever reopen.”

Neither gaming executive was surprised by Red Rock Resorts’ recent announcement that the company would not reopen the Fiesta Henderson and two North Las Vegas casinos – Texas Station and Fiesta Rancho – that had been closed since March 2020. The casino operator said it would sell the sites after demolishing the buildings and “reposition the land,” meaning the gaming entitlements would be removed at the time of sale.

For Red Rock Resorts, the statement ended any uncertainty surrounding the future of the casino locations that had been shuttered going on 28 months. It also allowed company officials to double down on efforts to grow Red Rock’s footprint in Las Vegas.