Monday, June 9, 1997 | 6:17 a.m.
The $198 million Sunset Station hotel-casino opens to the public at 9:30 p.m., following a VIP preview and a fireworks display.
Sunset Station is the fourth Las Vegas property for Station Casinos Inc. and their sixth nationwide. The company also owns Palace Station, Boulder Station and Texas Station hotel-casinos in Las Vegas, as well as hotel-casinos in Kansas City and St. Charles, Mo.
The new 20-story resort has 448 rooms and 80,000 square feet of casino space. It is located on Interstate 515 at Sunset Road.
Sunset Station is the latest in a growing number of resorts on the area's booming southeast side, joining Sam's Town, Boulder Station and Showboat hotel-casinos.
The resorts anchor the Boulder Strip, a stretch of highway which generated revenues of $483.6 million during the fiscal year ending June 1996, according to the Nevada Gaming Almanac. Some $333.9 million of that figure was generated by gaming.
Station executives say there is plenty of local business, with 70,000 people living within a three-mile radius. The resort is in the city of Henderson, with a population of 134,000.
In addition, the resort will be marketed heavily in Phoenix and Los Angeles.
The resort will feature a European architecture that has won over at least gaming analyst.
"You could put Sunset Station anywhere on the Strip and it would be a competitive casino," said David Anders, a gaming analyst with First Boston & Co. "The attention to detail nearly rivals that of the inside of New York-New York. It's a great property."
New York-New York, a hotel-casino that replicates the New York City skyline and many of the city's icons, opened on the Las Vegas Strip Jan. 2.
