Palms Names Kevin Glass as New General Manager After Ousting Steve Thayer
Following the unceremonious bootage of Palms G.M. Steve Thayer back in June 2025, the off-Strip resort has named a replacement, Kevin Glass.
Glass worked at Palms from 2001 to 2005 and has been the Assistant General Manager at the resort since March 2025.
He was V.P. of Hospitality in 2022 when Palms was acquired by the San Manuel tribe (technically, Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation) from Station Casinos after that company tanked the place hard and basically dumped it in a fire sale.
Glass previously worked the front desk at Monte Carlo, Cosmo, SLS, several Station Casinos (nobody’s perfect) and, most recently, Downtown Grand. The Palms announcement failed to include any of that, especially the Downtown Grand part, which is weird, because Kevin Glass had nothing to do with Downtown Grand’s looming foreclosure.
There’s a lot we could say about the untimely departure of Steve Thayer from Palms (unreported drama galore), as well as why a Las Vegas casino is owned by the San Manuel Gaming and Hospitality Authority, an instrumentality of Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation (it’s a way for tribe members to avoid regulatory scrutiny), but that would involve “thought” and “research” and possibly even “effort,” so that’s not happening.
We did do enough research to turn up this fun fact about Kevin Glass: He loves ice fishing and camping. Las Vegas is well-known for its ice fishing.
We would cut-and-paste quotes from the official announcement, but you would claw your eyes out.
The only thing you have to know is Kevin Glass is a saint. How do we know this? Because anyone who can navigate the minefield that is working for a tribe is, by default, a saint.
It’s a whole thing. There are complexities related to sovereignty, lots of leadership turnover, decision by committee, complications related to family ties and loyalties, the unspoken division between tribal members and “outsiders” and personality-driven politics.
Palms is basically a perk for players at the Yaamava’ Resort & Casino (previously San Manuel) in California, which has more money than the Saudi Royal Family.
The revenue expectations for Palms from the tribe are modest, so they’re over there cranking out a modest $25-30 million a year in EBITDA and nobody’s mad about it.
Glass will oversee a bunch of restaurant changes at Palms and its bastard offspring, Palms Place, among other duties.
Mabel’s is out. Vetri Cucina is out. Laguna Pool House and Rojo Lounge at Palms Place are out.
We love a good shake-up!
We also love that Palms told its social media marketer to start using title case in its Tweets so we could end our boycott of their feed.
We wouldn’t anticipate any dramatic moves from Kevin Glass, but hopefully he gets that visitors and locals are placing a high value on value at the moment. Value doesn’t have to mean cheap, but cheap works, too.
Keep those games player-friendly, find good replacements for those ejected dining concepts, keep parking free and make sure everyone gets the bread at Scotch 80 (even when they sit at the bar, grrr) and Palms will continue to be a reliably good time that manages to serve both visitors and locals, despite their sometimes divergent appetites.
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