Fear not and take heart, the end is near! (And we’re not talking about a fringe doomsday prediction.)
Fact is, the last few viable construction projects are on their way to completion, though you might have to live with a few half-finished skeletons for a while longer.
As for what’s on, the 800-pound elephant, MGM Mirage’s Project CityCenter, is definitely happening. When it’s completed in November of this year, it’ll clean up most of the construction mess on the Strip -- at least on the west side south of Bellagio and north of the Monte Carlo.
You will, however, have to live with the Cosmopolitan construction site, next door to CityCenter, wedged in between Aria and the Jockey Club. Its recent troubles included a takeover by Deutsche Bank, Cosmo’s primary lender, the machinations of which have delayed the debut till 2010 (or beyond). It’s still on, but where it stops, nobody knows.
Slightly to the north of that, Caesars new 665-room Octavius Tower is also happening, on schedule as well for a fall opening.
Up and across the Strip, north of the Riviera, the Fontainebleau is coming on like gangbusters, though it’s the quietest $2.9 billion 3,815-room megaresort to soon grace the scene in anyone’s memory. The preview center opened recently, to fanfare muted almost out of hearing range. Perhaps most amazingly, none of the principals in the project will submit to interviews. But the megajoint is on schedule for a late October/early November grand opening. This one, we predict, will boom when it debuts.
South on the east Strip, Planet Hollywood Towers by Westgate Resorts, the $400 million 50-story timeshare project, is on. The two glass towers just south of Planet Hollywood will feature 1,200 vacation villas and 28 penthouse suites. It’s slated for completion in 2010.
Two construction projects that are in abeyance are Boyd Gaming’s Echelon Place and the St. Regis Residences at the Venetian. Both are steel-framed shells; no construction is going on at either and when these projects will be completed is anyone’s guess. Eyesores? Perhaps. But that’s life in a recession.
Las Vegas Strip drawing-board projects either postponed indefinitely or completely off include the following (from south to north): the Royal Palm project, planned to replace the old Klondike; the 18-acre Elvis-themed resort on and around the property occupied by the Harley Davidson Café; Harrah’s Arena behind Bally’s; the Elad Group’s Plaza Hotel, on the New Frontier acreage across from the Wynn; Trump International’s second condo tower, also on the New Frontier property; Crown Las Vegas, a tower-casino planned for the lot vacated by the Wet ‘n’ Wild water park; and the 66-acre MGM Mirage metaresort announced for the vacant lot at the corner of the west Strip and Sahara Avenue.
