Kerkorian Puts Desert Inn Hotel on the Block : Casinos: The price is estimated at more than $200 million. The financier’s firm will use the proceeds to finance its Las Vegas theme park.

Financier Kirk Kerkorian on Tuesday placed his Desert Inn Hotel and Casino up for sale for an amount believed to exceed $200 million. The Desert Inn is a landmark property on the Las Vegas Strip with a colorful history but an unimpressive bottom line.

MGM Grand, Kerkorian’s majority-owned company in Culver City, has hired the New York investment banking firm of Bear, Stearns & Co. to conduct a worldwide search for a buyer for the 40-year-old casino-hotel.

MGM Grand intends to use the money from the sale to help finance its $700-million theme park on the Strip, scheduled to break ground late this year. The huge complex is expected to have a 5,000-room casino-hotel, the world’s largest, and a 40-acre movie theme park.

The Desert Inn was built by resort owner Wilbur Clarke in 1950 and was later bought by reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes. The Desert Inn was one of several casinos that Hughes bought during a frenetic buying spree in the mid-1960s.

Around Las Vegas, the Desert Inn is known as a high-class “boutique” casino-hotel that is relatively small and caters to high-rollers, particularly foreigners. The casino-hotel has several marketing offices in Mexico, Taiwan and Japan.

The foreign accent has sparked speculation that investors from Japan are the most logical buyers for the Desert Inn. “That’s possible,” MGM Chairman Fred Benninger said in a telephone interview.

According to Benninger, MGM Grand has spent $45 million to refurbish the Desert Inn and an additional $30 million for an adjacent golf course. Although Benninger declined to put a price on the property, Bear Stearns Vice Chairman Michael E. Tennenbaum said that “it is my personal opinion that we will be able to sell it for in excess of $200 million.”

The Desert Inn had an operating profit of $10 million last year, making it one of the less profitable properties on the glitzy Strip. “It’s certainly not one of the top moneymakers in town,” said a top executive at a rival casino company.

Hughes lived in seclusion in the Desert Inn’s penthouse suite from 1966 until he mysteriously departed on Thanksgiving Day, 1970. Hughes left the country and died six years later.

Kerkorian acquired the Desert Inn in 1987 for $167 million, a price that also included the nearby Sands Hotel.

MGM Grand later sold the Sands for $110 million to investors from New England.

The Desert Inn property includes the casino-hotel, which has 821 rooms, and the golf course, as well as 34 acres of vacant land next to the hotel.