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Timing is everything for creditors appealing the start date of the bankruptcy filing for Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s operating company in hopes of unlocking $468 million in value, Reuters reported yesterday. Caesars' unsecured creditors' committee yesterday asked a federal judge to review an April 29 ruling that Caesars is not obligated to consent to a forced bankruptcy case filed by creditors on Jan. 12. Caesars voluntarily filed for chapter 11 protection three days later, on Jan. 15. The unsecured creditors separately asked Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar to force Caesars to consent to the Jan. 12 case because they say Caesars might have cost them money by waiting. Caesars in October granted certain stakeholders a lien on as much as $468 million in cash to earn their support for its proposed restructuring. It waited until Jan. 15 to file for bankruptcy so the lien would be outside a statutory 90-day window to challenge certain pre-bankruptcy payments, the unsecured creditors argue. The unsecured creditors want to bring the case back within that window by enforcing the Jan. 12 filing, as invalidating the lien would free up the money for other creditors.

Balmoral Park and Maywood Park in Chicago are going up for sale as part of a deal to end a legal fight with Illinois riverboat casino operators, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The casino operators won an $82 million judgment against the tracks’ owners over an alleged bribery scheme involving disgraced ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The tracks filed for bankruptcy in December to prevent the casinos from trying to collect that money. As part of a negotiated settlement between the gambling-industry competitors, racetrack officials face a June 29 deadline to hire an investment banker to help look for buyers, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago.

Houston Texans owner Bob McNair is preparing to buy the Golf Club at Briar’s Creek near Charleston, S.C., after a bankruptcy judge approved that deal in a court order filed on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. With the approval from Judge John Waites, McNair and several minority investors who teamed up to offer a bid of $11.3 million can take over the private, 18-hole course. In earlier court documents, the club’s lawyers said Mr. McNair’s offer would enable the club, which employs 50 people, to spend $2 million on both its operations and on improvements. Yet some current and resigned golf club members are expecting to recover less than half of $13 million they are owed once the sale proceeds are paid out. The purchase offer includes $7.4 million in cash, while investor Edward L. Myrick Sr., who helped found the club, would forgive a roughly $3.9 million loan he had extended. The course filed for bankruptcy protection on Feb. 9, saying it hasn’t been able to persuade more than a handful of people to build homes on its lots. The community, spread over more than 900 acres, has only eight developed housing lots, according to court documents.

The bankrupt operating unit of casino company Caesars Entertainment Corp. agreed to grant creditors access to records through an independent examiner probing pre-bankruptcy deals, but a judge said that he will wait until Monday to approve the agreement, Reuters reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar said that he would also decide then whether to grant creditors' request for access to communications regarding the likelihood of success of the largest U.S. casino operator's restructuring plan. The casino operator, a unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp., went bankrupt in January with $18 billion in debt.

The Riviera Hotel and Casino, a classic that spent 60 years on the Las Vegas Strip, closed yesterday, the Associated Press reported. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority bought the 2,075-room building and 26 acres it sits on in February for $182.5 million plus $8.5 million in related transaction costs. Furniture and fixtures inside the casino-hotel are expected to be auctioned by NCL, National Content Liquidators, starting May 14 until everything is sold. The publicly-funded tourism agency plans to tear it down and expand the Las Vegas Convention Center to the Strip. The goal is to bring it down before the end of the year, said Heidi Hayes, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The former owner of the Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J., won a bankruptcy judge's approval yesterday to begin soliciting votes on a creditor-repayment plan that divvies up proceeds from the sale of the 47-story resort to a Florida developer, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Gloria Burns signed off on ballots and a plain-language summary of the plan that will be sent to creditors as well as a voting deadline, overruling an objection from Revel's utility supplier.

Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar allowed the operating unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp. to control its bankruptcy for another month, as creditors try to reach common ground with a court-appointed investigator probing the company's pre-bankruptcy dealings, Reuters reported yesterday. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., the largest U.S. casino operator, went bankrupt in January with $18 billion in debt. An independent examiner has been tapped to investigate whether the company's equity owners, which include Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital LP, illegally transferred key assets out of creditors' reach before the bankruptcy filing. Caesars had asked to extend its exclusive right to propose a restructuring plan until Nov. 15 from May 15, a request opposed by creditors, including first-lien noteholders. Judge Goldgar extended exclusivity only until May 27, the date of Caesars' next omnibus hearing.

A Chicago bankruptcy judge approved Caesars Entertainment’s plans to dismantle the former casino at the shuttered Harrah's complex in Mississippi's Tunica County, the Associated Press reported today. While Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar authorized the dismantling on March 30, it is unclear when Caesars will begin demolition or how long it will take. Alicia Draper, a permit clerk with the Tunica County Planning Commission, said yesterday that Caesars has yet to seek a required permit. Las Vegas-based Caesars closed Harrah's in June, eliminating about 1,000 jobs at the sprawling resort that opened in 1996 as Grand Casino Tunica. Demolition was opposed by the Clarksdale-based Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board. The board collects $3.65 million yearly from a port facility lease for the barges docked in Buck Lake, an oxbow lake of the Mississippi River about 30 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. Bankruptcy filings listed the board as Caesars' seventh-largest unsecured creditor, with $10.5 million due on a lease running through 2017. Caesars has paid some of that money since it filed for chapter 11 reorganization in January.

After a two-week blackout at Atlantic City's Revel Casino, a power supplier has agreed to turn the lights back on at the failed gambling resort under a temporary deal reached in court with its new owner, Reuters reported yesterday. With a hearing scheduled for Monday to reconsider a temporary restraining order to block owner Glenn Straub from using generators, ACR Energy Partners agreed to supply enough electricity to run a fire control system for two weeks. The deal with Straub's company, Polo North, will allow the two sides more time to find the long-term resolution to their dispute. The parties have agreed to a mediation if negotiations break down. ACR, formed to supply the Revel complex with electricity when it opened in 2012, has said that it would shut off power until Straub agreed to abide by a 30-year supply agreement it had with the Revel's former owners, and pay the hefty bills they accrued. Straub, a Florida developer who specializes in buying distressed properties, paid $82 million for the gleaming, $2.4 billion high-rise casino-hotel earlier this year. To sidestep ACR, Straub sought to hook up generators, but on Friday, U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Simandle issued a temporary restraining order barring any such move, citing the potential danger of using outside equipment.