In a market where revitalizing former hotel-casinos can feel like betting against the house, the sale of Reno’s Renaissance hotel was akin to hitting the jackpot.
Just ask Fernando Leal.
Before his company’s sale of the Renaissance Reno Downtown Hotel & Spa, Leal was involved in two high-profile projects to reimagine hotel-casinos.
One was the transformation of former Flamingo Hilton Reno into a condominium resort, the Montage. The project was hit by the global financial crisis of 2008 right as it finished construction and was ultimately sold.
The other was renovating the shuttered Fitzgeralds into a non-gaming property called CommRow. The project struggled before closing in 2013. It eventually found success under new ownership as the Whitney Peak Hotel.
