#derek stevens

by Don Hall

Derek Stevens started building Circa Resort & Casino on Fremont Street long before the coronavirus and our collective governments took the economy into its current death spiral. With the massive investment underway, the 1.25 million-square-foot, state-of-the-art complex is the first Las Vegas casino-resort built from the ground up in four decades and Stevens was not going to be daunted by a raging pandemic.

The place opened in November just as the Nevada governor had shut down bars and restaurants. My wife and I waited a few weeks for the initial crowds to thin out some and took a friend from Chicago (in town to visit his son, also a friend) to grab an early lunch and check the place out.

Circa is nothing short of a marvel.

Stevens has gone on record to state his belief that 2021 will be massive for Vegas. Others have indicated that following the year-long battle with stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, 2021 Vegas will resemble 1920's excess. My bet is they're right.

Circa is more than just a huge investment in a time of economic horrors. It is a beacon of hope. It is a reckless gamble in a city defined by reckless gambling. Circa is a monument to going "all-in" on a hand that is most likely a bluff but doing it with such bravado and confidence, no one else at the table (including the dispassionate virus) can see the tells.

We moved to Nevada without a plan. No jobs, no nest egg, no thought for what would happen once we arrived. We were done with Chicago (or perhaps Chicago was done with us) and it was time to take a reckless gamble. For an on-the-ground retelling of the experience, head over to Peculiar Journeys Podcast and start with Season 6.

The quick hits include me finding that my thirty years of experience amounted to nothing in the eyes of the Las Vegas events industry and Dana getting a job in a casino bowling alley that completely ate her face off. I landed at an Off-Strip casino on the corner of I-15 and Tropicana, The Wild Wild West, and she quit her days of spraying disinfectant in shoes and wrangling stray bowling balls.

We were lucky in the cards. As the pandemic kicked the globe in the collective nutsac, the corporation that owned the West kept paying its employees throughout the casino shutdown. I watched hundreds of thousands of people in this hospitality industry get laid off and furloughed while Station Casinos made sure I received a check every two weeks. I still came into work every day but the job was limited to cleaning things that hadn't been cleaned in years and making sure the place wasn't ransacked during the shutdown.

Just prior to the coming apocalypse I had been looking for different work. Casino is a strange life and my job was to keep those with just barely enough money for cigarettes to keep playing. It didn't exactly scar me but it created a large bruise on my sense of humanity that I couldn't shake. The pandemic stopped the search. Being risky is one thing. Being risky during an historic and near total economic maelstrom borders on stupid.

Unless you're Derek Stevens.

In 2016, I wrote this.

You wanna go out there and change worlds (or at least your own) then you need to be bold enough to fail big. To suck with gusto. To blow it big enough that you consider leaving the State in order to escape the ridicule and shame. Do it big or stay in bed, baby.

Only those badass enough to look like a complete fucking moron will ever rise to heights of glory. The Hail Mary Pass. The Last Ditch Effort. The Impossible Plan.

Play it safe and get safe results. And, aside from seat belts and bike helmets, safe never really makes a dent. 

It was true then. It's true now.

As we stand on the precipice of 2021, maybe it's time to look hard at those risks and determine to throw caution to the wind. I mean, seriously, what have you got to lose? Death is inevitable, life is a choice.

For myself, after a year and a half working the swing shift at the West and being so tired that my days and nights have been centered on chasing paper without respite, clocking in, coming home, boozing it up, sleeping, and clocking in again, it is time for a reckless gamble. So I resigned from the casino. I can look at my time there as if I were an embedded journalist and write a book about the experience.

For money, I'm embarking on a remote gig as a Senior Copywriter for a Denver-based online company. It isn't a 'Circa-level' risk but it'll do for the beginnings of 2021. Will I fail? Maybe. Does that matter? Yes -- because the possibility of blowing it and living behind the dumpster at the back end of a CVS during the worst part of a pandemic raises the stakes a bit, dontchu think?

Casino Resort Owner Throwing Away 1,000 One-Way Flights to Vegas

The D Las Vegas and Golden Gate co-owner Derek Stevens is announcing his casino resorts’ June 4 reopening by throwing away 1,000 one-way direct flights to Las Vegas from 24 cities in the United States.

Stevens’ flight promotion is labelled as “Keep America Flying.” This is simply a plan to boost domestic tourism across the country, a one free trip at a time.

In phone interview, Steven said…

Circa Resort & Casino, in Downtown Las Vegas, has reached the halfway mark in its 22-month construction process.

CEO and developer Derek Stevens announced that his highly anticipated integrated gaming resort Circa Resort & Casino has reached the halfway mark in its 22-month construction process.

Circa Resort Construction Circa Resort & Casino

On track for a December 2020 opening, the project will be the first ground-up gaming resort in Downtown Las Vegas since 1980.

“Reaching this milestone for…