The owner of the closed Silver Club in downtown Sparks has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and a company spokesman said Tuesday that the hotel/casino’s only chance of permanently reopening is to be sold.

Businessman Hal Holder Sr. owns a total of six northern Nevada casinos, five of which are still open. The federal bankruptcy court filings by the six properties automatically stay a Washoe County District order last week appointing a receiver sought by a company holding a $33 million defaulted loan note.

"This is the best move we could make to make sure five of the six properties stay open and our employees stay on the job while Holder Hospitality Group restructures its debt," company spokesman Tom Clark said Tuesday. "We don't see the other five properties closing any time soon."

On Tuesday, Clark also clarified rumors that Holder might reopen portions of the Silver Club this summer. Under state law, he said, a gaming establishment must be open for at least eight hours each quarter in order to keep its gaming license. To meet this requirement, Clark said the company will set up a couple of slot machines and a table game, open the doors for business and shut them again eight hours later.

There will be no food or beverage service, he said, and unless required by law the date will not be advertised. All regular state gaming laws apply to the opening, he said.

“It happens quite a bit in Las Vegas,” Clark said. “Some properties will just operate a trailer out in front.”

The reason to keep the gaming license is to sell it along with the property, Clark said. The only way the Silver Club will reopen permanently is if someone else buys it, he added. Over the last 24 months there have been several potential buyers, but a lack of capital available to gaming investments have prevented any of them from moving forward with the purchase.

Besides the Silver Club, the properties include the Commercial Casino and Stockmen's Casino Hotel in Elko, Scoreboard Casino in Spring Creek, the El Capitan in Hawthorne and Parker's Model T Casino in Winnemucca.

Holder also operates or has operated several other Nevada casinos, although they're not part of the receivership or bankruptcy proceedings. Holder Hospitality Group put all its Nevada properties up for sale in early 2007, hoping to get more than $200 million, but potential buyers faced difficulty securing credit as the economy worsened.

Holder, represented in the bankruptcy proceeding by attorney Steve Harris, bought his first Nevada casino in 1999 and eventually wound up with 13 properties and nearly 1,500 employees. His casino investments followed a string of successes in business turnarounds in Michigan and Florida.

The filing in federal bankruptcy court on Friday stayed the separate receivership process started in state district court by the note-holder, Northern Nevada Asset Holdings LLC, which acquired the $33 million note for $8.5 million from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC got the note following a bankruptcy filing by a bank that originally made the loan to Holder, Clark said.

Northern Nevada Asset Holdings is headed by Richard Holland and Thomas Reinhard of Colorado Springs, Colo. Holland owns more than 80 restaurants in the Midwest and West, as well as three Cripple Creek, Colo., casinos.

The LLC's Nevada representatives include longtime gambling industry attorney and executive Jeff Silver of Henderson.

Brendan Riley of the Associated Press contributed to this report.