The story of the Westward Ho property over the past year is quite a saga. Here’s what happened.
In September 2005, Centex Destination Properties, a Texas-based home builder, and Tharaldson Cos., a North Dakota-based hotel developer, purchased the 15-acre Westward Ho site for $145.5 million. Centex, at the time, was the managing partner. Their plan was to go in on a joint-venture high-rise condominium complex.
Two months later in November, the sprawling Westward Ho, which at one time was the largest motel in the world, was razed.
In March 2006, Tharaldson ponied up $170 million to buy out Centex, then announced plans to build a $1.8 billion megaresort with 1,000 hotel-condo units, 600 residential condos, a 600-room hotel, an 80,000-square-foot casino, and 200,000 square feet of retail space.
Then, last month, Harrah’s announced that it was swapping 24 acres adjacent to the Stardust with Boyd Gaming in exchange for Boyd’s Barbary Coast. Harrah’s had quietly purchased the 15-acre Westward Ho property, along with a nine-acre strip separating the Ho from the Stardust (the roadway between the two that connects the Strip to Industrial Road), for $365 million. In return, Harrah’s gains the 4.3-acre Barbary Coast, paying $84.8 million an acre to complete a $1 billion 350-acre jigsaw puzzle on the east side of the Strip.
Including the 24 acres it gets from Harrah’s, Boyd now owns 87 contiguous acres on the north Strip. Boyd, so far, is claiming that the additional land doesn’t change its plans for Echelon Place, the $4 billion metaresort the company will begin building on the Stardust site in spring 2007. So we’ll have to see to what use Boyd puts the Ho in the next few years.
