The Bicycle Hotel & Casino in Los Angeles County Could Be Set for Major Renovation
The Bicycle Hotel & Casino in Alexander Bell Gardens, Ca., set just a few miles sou'-east of downtown Los Angeles, is reportedly mark for a considerable renovation.
The Bike, as the Golden State cardroom is commonly called, was sold inward April for $103 million. The vendee is Parkwest Casinos, a cardroom owner-operator controlled by Saint John Park.
Park was a minority proprietor in The Bicycle prior to the acquisition. The sellers were existent land firms James Earl Carter Jr. Management Group and Thousand Palms Enterprises.
The Bike features a 100,000-square-foot cardroom, 99-room hotel, a spa, amusement space, and several restaurants and bars. The Real Deal, an online media outlet focused on existent estate news, reports that Parkwest Casinos has secured often more funding than requisite to terminated the $103 zillion acquisition.
Instead, Parkwest has entered into a loan concord with Comerica Bank for a demarcation of credit totaling $210 million. That could intimate that Parkwest plans to substantially renovate and/or spread out the iconic Golden State cardroom.
A gaming and hospitality investor simply scored freehanded bucks to purchase a casino and hotel inward Melville Bell Gardens, with enough left wing o'er to intimate bigger ambitions,” wrote Queen Isabella Farr, who covers Los Angeles for The Real Deal.
Los Angeles man of affairs Sam William S. Gilbert opened The Bike inward November of 1984. Four years later, US federal authorities brought allegations against the existent land developer that he used laundered do drugs money to finance the casino’s construction.
Gilbert died quaternion days after existence indicted. The US government activity took curb of the casino in 1990 after concluding that Sir William Gilbert used $12 zillion inward marked-up money to build the original casino. It was later sold to buck private interests.
The Bicycle underwent a major expansion inwards 2015 that resulted inward the seven-story hotel tower. CA only when has tribal casinos and commercial cardrooms, the latter beingness lawfully permitted to control non-house-banked card games.
Bike Name Change
Parkwest Casinos has cardrooms in Livermore, Rancho Cordova, Lodi, Sacramento, and Sonoma. The company’s acquisition of The Bike is its number one cassino investment inward Southern California.
Parkwest reportedly plans to rename The Bicycle to Parkwest Bicycle Casino. Though Parkwest has not in public confirmed those rumors, documents filed with the Golden State Gambling Control Commission (CGCC), which regulates cardrooms, suggests the make convert is forthcoming.
Specific details surrounding the $210 trillion inward secured financing for Parkwest’s takeover of The Bike remains a mystery. The loan leaves around $107 meg inward funding left over followers the company’s completion of The Bike purchase.
Checkered Past
The Bicycle Hotel & Casino’s run-ins with the practice of law are not marooned to Gilbert. It was just inwards 2017 that the cardroom was raided past federal officials on suspicions that the casino was beingness used by legion(p) uncollectible actors to launder money.
The years-long investigating concluded with The Bicycle agreeing lastly twelvemonth to pay $500,000 to the federal government for anti-money laundering shortcomings. The investigating was a multi-department probe involving the US Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, Attorney’s General Office, and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).