Silverton furloughs more than 600 workers, keeps Hyatt Place open

More than 600 workers at the off-Strip Silverton have been furloughed, the property’s top executive said Friday.

Craig Cavileer, CEO of the 300-room hotel-casino owned by real estate executive Ed Roski, said the Hyatt Place Las Vegas at Silverton Village, a 150-room Hyatt-branded nongaming property, remains open. Hyatt Place, which opened in October, operates as an essential licensed business permitted to stay open under Gov. Steve Sisolak’s Friday executive order that required non-essential businesses to close in an effort to contain the coronavirus.

“Conforming with communications of the governor and other authorities as to essential and non-essential categories, we operate in both the gaming and non-gaming environment and the governor’s made it clear on how we operate in those circumstances,” Cavileer said.

Cavileer said all but “mission-critical employees” — security, surveillance and a skeleton crew for operations — have been furloughed. He said full-time salaried and hourly employees are affected and that there are between 600 and 800 workers furloughed.

Silverton employees joined hundreds of thousands of other hospitality industry employees who have been laid off or furloughed nationwide as a result of the virus outbreak.

The Nevada Resort Association, of which Silverton is a member, on Friday said 320,000 Nevada employees relying on $1.3 billion in wages and salary payments each month are at risk of losing their jobs — nearly twice as many as was reported during the Great Recession.

The Review-Journal received an anonymous email from a Silverton employee complaining about being forced to work to clean the casino property when it was closed and said management was not concerned about the health of employees during the shutdown.

Cavileer said the company was in conformance with cleaning protocols. He said he’s been through hard times before and he’s counting on the city’s resiliency to bounce back.

“I was right out of college during the ‘87 (stock market) crash, went through the dot-com collapse in ‘92, all of us through 9/11 and (the recession) in ‘08,” he said. “Twenty-three of those years were in Vegas doing what we’re doing now. I know for sure we’re going to get through it. What I don’t know is when, but I know we will because we always do.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.