A Las Vegas-based convenience store and travel center operator is interested in acquiring the Flying J truck stop in Primm, which is among the businesses in the border town with California set to close July 4.

However, a final agreement dictating the sale price and other factors has yet to be reached.

Las Vegas-based Affinity Gaming announced earlier this month that the last of Primm's three casinos would permanently close, along with Primm Center, which has several food and sundries outlets, the Flying J and the Primm Valley Lotto Store, just across the state line in California. Some 344 workers are losing their jobs, nearly 75 percent of whom have to vacate their company-owned apartments behind the casinos. 

LV Petroleum, which operates 76 TA travel centers nationwide, including three in Nevada, submitted a letter of interest regarding the truck stop earlier this month to Primm operator Affinity Gaming, which is owned by Z Capital Partners, a New York-based hedge fund.

Vijay Sekhon, outside legal counsel for Z Capital Partners, told the Nevada Gaming Control Board last week that the chairman of the board overseeing the Primm properties "conveyed his support to do a transaction that would maximize value for all parties." 

Drivers interviewed by The Nevada Independent at the Flying J Truck Stop earlier this month said they are concerned about finding a place to gas up and rest if the Primm location closes. The truck stop, adjacent to the closed Whiskey Pete's Hotel and Casino, has 10 fuel lanes and multiple showers and facilities for drivers. One trucker said he would rely on Flying J's corporate offices to provide alternate facilities.  

Sekhon added that the board received the LV Petroleum letter on May 13 "and, within hours, got the special committee together to negotiate and get it signed," which acknowledged the board was in receipt of the document. The letter's existence was not publicly known until it was mentioned during last week's control board hearing.

"If the LV Petroleum bid is not acceptable to the landlord, we are definitely open to any alternative," Sekhon said. "[We] want to do whatever we can to maintain maximum jobs and continuity." 

Affinity Gaming leases the casinos and other businesses in the community, 40 miles south of Las Vegas, from the Primm family. A spokesman for the Primm family could not be reached. The Primm family paid for a full-page advertisement in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on May 17, vowing "a return to better days."  

Gaming Control Board Chairman Mike Dreitzer told Sekhon he expected Z Capital, which acquired the Primm casino operations in the 2010 bankruptcy reorganization of Herbst Gaming, to keep the regulatory agency apprised of "potential opportunities that could keep Primm open and operating."

Affinity CEO Scott Butera told the control board last week that Primm was "just not viable as a casino operation."  

Butera told the regulators the company was "working very closely with the landlord, looking at either [another operator] potentially taking over the asset or hopefully selling the asset." He told the control board that "a potential suitor" submitted a letter of interest for the property.

"We're hoping that we'll have a transition on the property, but we are exiting as the tenant."

A representative from LV Petroleum did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. The company's only Southern Nevada TA Travel Center is near the Railroad Pass Casino in Henderson.

LV Petroleum also operates TA Travel Centers in West Wendover and Carlin. 

This is a developing story and will be updated.