Plaza Hotel Closing in November

Hotel operations at the Plaza downtown will close on November 11th. The casino will remain open, along with the popular Firefly restaurant and Rat Pack is Back show.

The official word is that the hotel is closing for renovations and will re-open in 2011 with the new name Union Plaza. Unofficially though many people are wondering if the remodeling will be done and how soon. It might make more economic sense to just leave the hotel closed for a while until things turn around a little bit. With rooms downtown as cheap as they are the hotel portion of the revenue can't be that substantial.

Unfortunately the closure means the loss of 400 jobs. The Plaza's parent company will try to place some of the employees at their other hotels (Las Vegas Club and The Western) and will also try to re-hire them if and when the hotel re-opens.

It will be interesting to see how well the planned renovations go, along with the planned renovations over at Lady Luck. If things go as planned, downtown visitors could have two new fresh hotels to choose from in 2011 and 2012. On the flip side there's a pretty good chance that things will be put on hold indefinitely, which would be another negative development for downtown.