The old Desert Inn golf course, which currently occupies scores of acres behind the Wynn and the upcoming Encore, will be torn down to make way for an as-yet-unnamed two-hotel-and-convention-center complex.
If completed as announced, the hotels would contain a total of 5,200 rooms and the convention center would be 1.8 million square feet. A water attraction similar to the one at Bellagio is planned for the property, as is an underground tram that would connect guests to the Las Vegas Convention Center across Paradise Road at the back of the golf course.
(On a side note, Wynn’s new convention center would compete with and complement the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo. This cluster of convention centers would all be within a mile of one another and boast a combined total of more than five million square feet, big enough to handle the world’s largest conventions. As usual, Steve Wynn’s vision encompasses the Big Picture of Las Vegas’s future.)
This new project won’t be completed until 2011 at the earliest; plans, including the name, budget, and details, are expected to be submitted to county officials by the end of this year.
