Three hundred and forty-four workers were days away from losing their jobs on Independence Day. Then the family that built Primm, Nevada, found a partner willing to keep the lights on.
Members of the Primm family announced Monday that they signed an agreement with Las Vegas-based Terrible's to operate hotel-casino and related properties in the fading border town, Fox News Digital reported exclusively. The deal averts what would have been a full closure of Primm Valley Resort & Casino, the last operating casino hotel in a complex that once drew millions of road-trippers on Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The rescue came after months of decline that had already gutted the town. Whiskey Pete's shut its doors in December 2024. Buffalo Bill's Resort & Casino limited operations to special events this month. If Primm Valley had followed them into darkness, the closure would have wiped out 624 hotel rooms and suites and 46,000 square feet of entertainment space, Fox 5 reported.
Cory Clemetson, grandson of Primm's founder and president of the Primm South Real Estate Company, did not mince words about what a July 4 mass layoff would have meant. He told Fox News Digital his grandfather would have been appalled.
"If [my grandfather] were alive today, he would be outraged [about the idea of] [letting go in excess of 300 people] on the 4th of July, a celebratory day, in the heat."
Clemetson added that his grandfather "would just be mortified" if the shutdown had gone forward as planned. The scheduled closure was the doing of Affinity Interactive, the casino operator that had leased and run the Primm properties for nearly 15 years. Affinity's CEO, Scott Butera, recently told Nevada's Gaming Control Board that Primm is "just not viable as a casino operation," the Nevada Independent reported.
That blunt assessment from a company backed by New York-based private equity firm Z Capital set the stage for what looked like a final chapter. Primm faced outright extinction as its economic anchor prepared to vanish.
But the Primm family, the property owners, not the operators, refused to let it end that way.
Tim Herbst, president of Terrible's, framed the agreement as both a business opportunity and a preservation effort. In a statement shared with Fox News Digital, Herbst said:
"Primm has long been one of Nevada's most recognizable destinations. This partnership reflects our commitment to preserving that legacy while creating new opportunities for growth, investment and tourism. We believe Primm's best days are still ahead."
Clemetson echoed that optimism, calling the company "a qualified and like-minded partner." He expressed hope that the new operator would "transition in a much more responsible way... for the sake of the hardworking paycheck-to-paycheck employees that have really, in many cases, given their lives to Primm."
The full terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. It remains unclear exactly when Terrible's will begin operating the properties or whether all 344 jobs threatened by the July 4 closure will be preserved. Fox News Digital previously reached out to Affinity Interactive for comment; no response was noted.
Since the 1970s, Primm thrived as the first stop across the Nevada-California border for travelers heading to or from Las Vegas. Families pulled off the interstate for cheap rooms, budget meals, and a taste of casino culture without Vegas prices. Clemetson recalled the town's heyday with affection.
"I think people just remember the great days when they stopped [by] as kids."
He described a roller coaster that once operated at the resort. His relatives, he said, "came up with great ideas, including [a $1 hot dog], a really good hot dog, Coney-Island style." The whole pitch was affordability. "It was affordable for many families, even by Las Vegas standards," Clemetson said.
That era faded under Affinity Interactive's management. When a private equity firm in Manhattan decides a Nevada border town "just not viable," the people left holding the bag are not the fund managers. They are the 344 workers who would have been told to clean out their lockers on the Fourth of July. The pattern is familiar across small-town America, where the loss of a single anchor business can destabilize an entire community.
Clemetson said he is "bullish on the long-term prospects" for Primm, and he pointed to a concrete reason: the Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport, previously known as Ivanpah Valley Airport. The facility, planned along Interstate 15 near Primm, is expected to begin construction by 2029, with completion as early as 2035.
A major regional airport on Primm's doorstep could transform the town's economics entirely. Clemetson argued that "Primm will have an advantage that very few Las Vegas casinos even today have." That is a bold claim for a town whose last casino hotel nearly went dark this week, but it is not without logic. Proximity to a new airport could deliver the kind of captive foot traffic that made Primm viable in the first place, before the interstate rest stop lost its pull.
Of course, 2035 is a long way off. Whether Terrible's can sustain operations for a decade while waiting for that infrastructure payoff is an open question. The deal buys time. It does not guarantee a comeback.
The contrast at the center of this story is hard to miss. A private equity-backed operator leased Primm's properties for nearly 15 years, declared the town unviable, and scheduled a mass layoff on a national holiday. The family whose name is on the town scrambled to find a partner and signed a deal to keep people employed.
Clemetson spoke about his grandfather, a man he described as "a legendary figure in our state", with the kind of personal warmth that does not show up in quarterly earnings reports. He recalled stealing his grandfather's toupee as a child and running around while the old man chased him, laughing. The anecdote is small, but it says something about the difference between owners who see a place as home and operators who see it as a line item.
The pressures that squeeze small-town economies are real and varied. Rising costs, shifting consumer habits, and policy debates over wages and regulation all play a role. But so do the decisions of the people in charge, and those decisions have names attached to them.
Clemetson acknowledged the uncertainty ahead plainly: "We don't know exactly what the future is going to hold, but we are giving it our very best to get back to better days."
That is not a guarantee. But for 344 workers who were staring at a pink slip on the Fourth of July, it is a whole lot more than they were getting from the last outfit in charge.
Sometimes the people who care most about a place are the ones whose family built it, not the ones who bought the lease.
