Saturday, April 13, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
IT'S one of the Strip's oldest and most famous landmarks, a place where presidents once stayed.
But today, the future of the Sands Hotel, packed with Las Vegas folklore, remains uncertain.
So is the well-being of its employees.
Talk has been racing through the 40-year-old Las Vegas landmark that the walls are about to come tumbling down in the name of progress, leaving 1,100 loyal workers without jobs.
That has left Sands owner Sheldon Adelson, who has ambitious expansion plans, with a huge morale problem.
Employees have become extremely nervous about their future and, from what I've been able to determine, management has done little to calm their fears.
Rumors that the Sands is considering closing its doors during the expansion have become so rampant that the powerful Culinary Union, which represents Sands workers, has decided to intervene.
"We've heard the rumors about the place being leveled," says Culinary Staff Director D. Taylor. "We're going to do whatever it takes to have management understand that the workers aren't going to sit idly by and see their futures thrown away."
Sands legal counsel Shelley Berkley is downplaying the rumors and offering comforting words to the employees.
"At this time, there are no plans to close the Sands Hotel and no plans have been made on the future of the current Sands location," says Berkley, whose father is a longtime casino employee. "Whatever decision is made will take into consideration the welfare and security of the employees of the Sands Hotel."
Berkley has been authorized to speak on behalf of the resort's board of directors.
Her words, however, aren't stopping the Culinary Union from rallying the troops.
"We want to come up with an aggressive plan to ensure that thousands of combined years of service to the Sands get to be part of whatever future the property has," Taylor says. "They deserve to be involved."
Adelson has announced plans to spend as much as $1.5 billion on two 3,000-room hotels to make the property the largest resort on the Strip, bigger than the MGM Grand. One tower will have an entrance off the Strip on Sands Avenue. The other will replace the original world-famous Sands tower. A team of managers Adelson assembled has been developing plans for the project.
The question yet unanswered is which approach Adelson will take.
Will he build the one off the Strip first and allow the Sands to remain open during the construction? Or will he choose to tear down the Sands and build there first?
If he takes the latter option, it will mean layoffs for most employees.
What has concerned workers is the recent discovery of what Sands officials have called a "timeline" for possible layoffs.
The working document was supposedly found by a hotel cleaning crew on the desk of one of Adelson's new managers.
It reportedly set a deadline for the hotel to notify workers of layoffs if the option of tearing down the tower was pursued first.
The cleaning crew, I'm told, made copies of the timeline and passed it around the hotel, whipping employees into a frenzy.
The deadline has come and gone, and no layoffs have been announced. But, though no news is good news to the employees in this case, it hasn't settled them down.
Sands executives continue to keep the workers in the dark about expansion plans.
No memo, for example, has been circulated informing employees that their jobs are safe.
Some attribute that to the hotel's own indecisiveness in pursuing the expansion. The hotel hasn't even bought the surrounding land it needs to start construction.
In late November, Sands officials said they hoped to get the project going within six months. That seems unlikely now.
Most observers believe plans are moving so slowly that construction may not even start this year.
It's small consolation, however, to Sands employees who wonder how much longer they'll be receiving their paychecks.
n
The shakeup continues at the Nevada Republican Party.
Finance Director Ellen Mai has become the latest to resign.
Mai quit after raising complaints about the way she was treated by Executive Director Charles Muth, who was encouraged to step aside last month.
Several others have left the office, as well, during Muth's stormy tenure, which also has been plagued by a bookkeeping boondoggle.
Though GOP Chairman John Mason has publicly indicated the problems "didn't rise to the level of my involvement," insiders tell me Mason was informed of the mess long before Muth announced his resignation.
Mai reportedly wrote several memos to Mason expressing her concerns about Muth and other problems within the office.
Mason, I'm told, persuaded the talented Mai to come back to the office after she quit. But her return lasted only one day.
Muth, a likeable guy despite administrative flaws, is being retained as a consultant to the GOP.
He's also thinking about running against Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas.
As it turns out, when Mason said last month that he was doing everything he could to encourage Muth to run against Titus, he wasn't kidding.
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