Fifty years is a long time in any industry. In the casino business, it’s practically a lifetime. When a small 5,000-square-foot gambling room opened its doors west of the Las Vegas Strip in the summer of 1976, nobody could have predicted it would eventually reshape how an entire city thinks about entertainment, neighborhood development, and what it really means to cater to the people who actually live somewhere.
The story of Station Casinos is not one of overnight glamour. It’s one of grinding incrementalism, smart neighborhood instincts, and a family’s stubborn conviction that Las Vegas locals deserved something designed specifically for them. Fifty years later, the evidence is everywhere. Let’s dive in.
A Bingo Hall With Big Ideas: The 1976 Origin Story
Palace Station originally opened as The Casino on July 1, 1976, attached to the Mini Price motel. It was not glamorous. The Casino opened initially as a 5,000-square-foot facility with 100 slot machines, six table games, four of them blackjack, a small bar, and a buffet next door to the Mini-Price Motel. Think about that for a second. That is the footprint of a large convenience store, not a casino empire.
The first addition came in July 1977 when a Bingo parlor was added, bringing 15,000 more square feet of space, including an 8,000-square-foot Bingo room, 300 more slot machines, an enlarged buffet, a Keno game, and the property’s first full-service restaurant. That bingo addition gave the venue its early identity. The ownership group included Frank Fertitta Jr., who bought out his partners in 1979. From that point on, it was very much a family operation.
Inventing the Locals Casino: A Quiet Revolution
Here is the thing most people don’t appreciate: the locals casino model did not just happen. Someone had to invent it. Bingo Palace used strategies to target locals, like a reasonably priced buffet, a cheap breakfast special, check-cashing, and T-shirt promotions. Those all became standard at locals casinos, but they were new at the time, and Bingo Palace caught on. These seem like obvious tactics in hindsight, but in the mid-70s, Las Vegas casinos were largely designed around the tourist experience…