Wall Street insiders have long caught on to Station's story and have recognized the company for having one of the industry's strongest growth prospects over the next decade. President Lorenzo Fertitta, 36, has helped to further boost the company's reputation beyond Las Vegas.

Fertitta, the son of company founder Frank Fertitta Jr. and younger brother of Chief Executive Frank Fertitta III, is chairman of the Nevada Resort Association and a co-owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a contest that incorporates boxing and martial arts.

Question: Station Casinos Inc. is a Wall Street darling and company executives have appeared on financial cable shows. But the company is still relatively little known outside of Vegas. Is that changing?

Answer: I do think it's changing. We've been very successful as far as getting a lot of recognition from Wall Street and from institutional investors. Unless you are really clearly focused on understanding the gaming industry our name's not going to come up. And that's one of the things that (Chief Financial Officer) Glenn Christenson, my brother Frank and I worked on a lot over the last year. We wanted to go out and meet with as many investors as we could to try to bring that awareness level up so people understood how good our story was.

Has the company attracted more institutional investors?

Yes. In the past a lot of times what would happen is that guys who ran portfolios for mutual funds would say, 'I want to get exposure to gaming.' And they would go right to the top of the list ... because maybe they've been to Las Vegas or they're more familiar with an MGM or a Park Place or a Harrah's. We decided to go on the road and tell our story so they knew who we are and what our story is all about and also to differentiate ourselves. We really don't think that from an investment standpoint that we should be grouped in with all those other companies because our business really is different.

Station has four parcels of land for future casinos, land in Reno for a casino and four contracts to develop casinos for California Indian tribes. Are there any other states Station is eyeing for casinos and are you looking abroad?

We look at everything. I think we have the best track record of passing up deals. We spend a lot of time looking at different states, whether it's Pennsylvania, Florida, Mississippi, all around the country and even internationally. We went and looked for a long time in the U.K. When it gets down to it Station Casinos is very focused here on what we do, which is providing gaming for locals. We've built such a great pipeline for growth in both the locals development side and managing casinos for Native American tribes that we want to continue to maintain our focus. We love Nevada. We love the regulatory structure here. It's very stable. The legislative side is very stable. Right now we don't see a need to venture out. Not to say we would never do it but right now we don't see a need to do that.

Will these projects occupy Station for the next five, 10 or 15 years or could there be some other new casinos on the horizon that we don't know about yet?

We're always looking for new opportunities and looking to backfill the portfolio. The idea is to keep the pipeline growth out there far enough so we clearly know the direction the company's going in. I would say with what we have on our plate now, at least for the next decade, we're going to be busy. That's one of the things that really differentiates our company from a lot of other gaming companies is that we've got so much built-in growth that we control. We don't have to go out and acquire any company. We have growth built into our company right now.

Recently the company decided to expand its Santa Fe and Fiesta Henderson casinos. How do you evaluate which properties to upgrade or expand?

Many times a year we go through a process where we will look at all the potential projects we have and we rank them by what we think the return on investment is going to be, what we think the risk of that project is. It's basically a return on risk analysis. We rank them from best to worst and start with the best. We felt that around Santa Fe, on the northwest side of town, there's so much growth that on the weekends right now we're at capacity. The parking there is very constrained, and the (traffic) in the building is very heavy. Historically, master planned expansions have been very good ways for us to generate high returns at lower risk, certainly much less risk than ... building a whole new facility. At Fiesta Henderson, we felt there needed to be a parking garage. That property's never had covered parking. We felt we could enhance the sports book there, and the movie theater is going to be a great amenity to help drive some additional volume.

The Las Vegas valley is growing in all directions. Of all the casino sites the company owns, which one do you think is the best and why?

We are very excited about Red Rock Station. You have a tremendous demographic base when you look in the three-to-five mile radius, which is typically the radius we draw our customer base from. There are 50 percent more adults per gaming position in that market versus Green Valley Ranch and the household income is about 20 percent higher than Green Valley Ranch. When you put that combination together and look at the success at Green Valley you start to see that Red Rock could really be a great facility. There's also the fact that it's on a major interstate and along major commercial corridor, similar to Sunset Station in Henderson. It's almost got all the best attributes of all of our other properties combined. That's why we decided to go in a bit bigger out of the box. In the past we've started smaller and master planned (for future growth).

Some residents near the Red Rock Station casino in Summerlin complained about the height of the hotel tower and others had a problem with the casino. Station maintained that residents should have known about the project before they bought homes as required by law. How do you think the company can improve on this notification process to make sure this doesn't happen again?

In that specific scenario, as with some other scenarios, it's really not our duty or role (to notify residents). Those entitlements were gained by the Howard Hughes Corporation years ago to make that a master planned area and specifically identify that piece of property to be entitled for gaming. We then came in and bought that property with the entitlements. Typically that's what we do. We don't go in and buy a piece of property and then get it entitled. We usually buy entitled property. Through the process of selling homes in that area, (the prior landowner) would let people know ahead of time, from a full disclosure standpoint, that that was zoned for gaming. One of the things we tried to do when there seemed to be kind of an issue with the height of the building was to set up a town hall meeting to sit down and explain to the community that we were trying to build something that was additive to the community and provide amenities that hopefully they would want to come and participate in. We wanted to build something very nice that would fit in and not in any way be an eyesore. Ultimately it worked out. In the end everyone was happy. We reduced the size of the building, and we're moving forward and making a big investment in the community.

Did the company learn anything in the process?

We learned these are issues people are very concerned about. We need to make sure that we are sensitive to them going in and make sure we communicate with the community.

Did residents know how big the project was going to be from the start or do you think some were genuinely caught off guard because they envisioned a neighborhood casino being something smaller?

From our research, we really didn't see a great deal of concern about the project. All the people we talked to were super excited about the project. I think there was a small group of people that really got out there and got vocal about the situation and made it seem like a bigger concern than maybe it really was.

Station has so far managed to fend off the Culinary Union's attempts to organize your workers. Have you indoctrinated your workforce to keep out the union?

Ultimately it's the team members' decision whether they want to be represented by a third party. To date -- we've been in business since 1977 -- they've decided they don't want third-party representation or feel like they don't need third party representation. Station Casinos is not anti-union or pro union. We're pro employee. We try to do what we can to create a great work environment. To date we've been successful in doing that. (This year) Fortune named us one of the top 100 best companies in America to work for, the first time any gaming company has had that distinction. Those are conducted via blind interviews (with employees) that the company has no ability to see or hear prior to publication.

The union criticized Station for years, saying company insiders have too great a hold over the company in terms of ownership and board membership. What's your response?

There's a double standard there. They've got a contract with MGM, and they don't complain about (majority shareholder and board member Kirk) Kerkorian having too many shares. They have a contract with Boyd Gaming, and they don't complain about (Chief Executive and Chairman) Bill Boyd. It just seems strange that they don't have a contract with us, and these are huge issues for them.

Station earns more profit on investment than your Strip competition and your stock has risen more than most in the industry. But you still don't have a Strip casino. Might you make a power play on the Strip someday?

We've looked on the Strip a number of times. It just keeps coming back to one thing. While it's tempting -- you're on the big stage all of a sudden and that might be more fun to do -- the best way to get a return for our shareholders is to continue to do what we do, which is to continue developing in the locals market. It's not as sexy and it's not as fun but we're going to make more money that way. Historically we've had the highest returns on investment in the gaming industry. Every time we start to venture that way we seem to (remind ourselves) to stay the course and do what we do and continue to develop high return projects. That's not to say we wouldn't do that in the future but right now we have our hands full with the locals market.

What has the company passed up? Were you ever that close to signing a deal?

I don't necessarily want to comment on potential transactions or ones we didn't do for whatever reason. I will say we have looked very closely at times at certain transactions on the Strip. It's just that the right one never came along.

The company has said its Jumbo Jackpot program has boosted revenue. How important have these random jackpots been in sustaining the growth of the company?

I think the marketing programs we've put in place have played a major role in our success. Innovative marketing has always been a part of our company. It started back in the early 80s when my dad was running Palace Station and came up with ideas like the "car a day" giveaway. People thought he was crazy. How could you give away a car a day in (a month)? When he did it business was beyond his wildest dreams. He came up with a great giveaway, a football contest, where the winner of the contest would get a brand new house and the loser of the contest -- the one who picked the most losers -- would also get a new house. Jumbo Jackpot is just an extension of that. Really what we tried to do there was see how could we use our size and scope in the marketplace as a competitive advantage. We linked up all 20,000 machines and had an extra bonus just for playing with (our loyalty) card. It's based on a random (number draw). It took two to three months but as people started to see that this was hitting very frequently, (they started to ask themselves) why (they) would play anywhere else.

Besides George Maloof, you're probably the only casino executive to own a sports franchise. As a co-owner of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, how involved are you in that franchise and how do you balance those tasks with your job as full-time executive?

The real answer is that you never really stop working form the time you get up to the time you go to bed. That's just been part of my life and the way that we grew up. It's been a family business. It just never really ends. Frank and I decided to get involved in buying the Ultimate Fighting Championship because we liked it. It was a hobby for us. I grew up in Las Vegas; I was always a big boxing fan, a big fight fan. I wanted to be involved in some way. I really felt like this was the future and where combat sports were going. When we bought it it was basically on its deathbed. We completely revamped it, repositioned it and put together a great management team. They basically handle the day-to-day stuff. Frank and I do weigh in on just about every major decision like what the matchups are going to be. We do spend some time being involved with the UFC, but Station Casinos clearly takes up the majority of our time.

Have you made any efforts to cross-market the UFC with your casinos?

We really don't think there's a fit there. We tried with boxing but it never really worked for us. Part of that is because we are a locals company. When we've done fights at Texas or some of our other properties we would almost displace the frequent customer that would typically be there on a Saturday night. They couldn't get a parking space or whatever. Plus, the fact is that we don't have any facilities that are big enough to handle a UFC event. Our first event attracted about 4,000 people, and our (most recent) at MGM Grand drew about 14,000 people.

Speaking of Maloof, the Palms and the Hard Rock have successfully captured the youth market and all the other casinos appear to be following suit. What is Station Casinos doing to tap into this market?

You've got to give George a lot of credit for having a vision and going after that market and being successful. Certainly Peter Morton had done the same thing. They're both pioneers. The Hard Rock and Palms market is younger than what we'd call the young (market for) Green Valley Ranch -- somebody from L.A. who's going to stay in our rooms and maybe go to the Whiskey Bar and hang out at the pool. I'd say they are more in their mid-30s to mid-40s range versus the mid-20s. I'm sure there's some overlap to some extent but we're not really going after that end of the market.

Does that mean you're not really interested in that market?

Not with any of our existing facilities. Down the road as we develop further projects we may change our mind because it is a deep market. But right now it's not a priority for us.

Have you been involved in any discussions to help bring a professional sports team to Las Vegas?

No, I really haven't.

Do you think that will ever happen?

It's a possibility. I don't know. If I had to pick which sport I thought would succeed the best I would say football. But it seems that since (the NFL) won't even let us run ads during the Super Bowl I would say that that's a very big long shot. Everyone's talking about baseball. I think it would be good for the city if that could get done, depending on how it was structured.

You were near the top of our list of highest-paid local executives last year. Do you believe your compensation is relative to your performance?

First of all, my compensation is set by an independent group of the board of directors who go out and hire a compensation consultant who gets information on peers within the industry. They come up with what they think the compensation package should be. I think that over the years I've been here we've created a lot of value for shareholders.

The company has contributed to a local problem gambling center and donated money to problem gambling research. Do you think the company is doing enough to address this problem?

I think we've taken a leadership role in the contributions we've made and in trying to help start up some of these organizations. We think it's a very important part of the community and it's something that needs to happen for the community. We're committed.

Liz Benston is a gaming writer for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4077 or by e-mail at benston@lasvegassun.com.