We're assuming you're asking how it is that the Jockey Club wasn't sold to make room for new developments (it's not CityCenter that surrounds the Jockey Club on three sides; it's Cosmopolitan, scheduled to open around a year from now).
We gave this answer to a member of the staff, who actually owns timeshare units at the Jockey Club. Here’s his response.
The Jockey Club (JC) celebrated its 35th anniversary this year, having opened in 1974 in its prime location, just south of the corner of the Strip and Flamingo Road (at that time, it was next to the Dunes). Its two buildings opened as condos, among the first in Las Vegas, with a total of 348 units, of which only 78 were sold. A few years later, the other 270 units were converted to timeshares, again among the first in town. And that's the way it stands today: 78 wholly owned condos and 270 timeshare units.
The Jockey Club's timeshare units are sold out and have been for many years. So if you multiply 270 units times 52 weeks a year, you come up with 14,040 "intervals," or weeks owned.
And that's half of the answer to your question as to why the Jockey Club hasn't been, and probably can never be, sold to developers. Some owners own more than one week (my aunt owned three, which I inherited), but even so, there are probably more than 10,000 owners of timeshares at the Jockey Club. Getting them all to agree on selling, and for what price, is as close to a physical impossibility as I can imagine.
Complicating matters are those 78 condo owners. Two associations represent owners at the Jockey Club: the condo association and the timeshare association.
The Jockey Club did sell all the acreage surrounding the buildings themselves to Cosmopolitan, so it's hemmed in on three sides by the two skyscraping Cosmo towers.
For the past five years or so, Cosmo construction noise, dust, and upheaval, plus parking, at the JC have been a nightmare. Also, all the south-facing rooms in both JC buildings look out at the blank concrete wall of Cosmo's parking garage, literally ten feet away; these are dark, as little sun penetrates beyond the high wall of the garage. But when Cosmo is completed next year, JC owners will have special privileges (passes to the pool, spa, and tennis courts and dedicated parking with a special elevator directly into the Jockey Club), so there will be some benefits to the "close association" of the two operations. There was also talk of a mural being painted on the garage wall, to give JC owners a nicer view (as the owner of the famous Underground House in Vegas did), but we've heard nothing further about that idea in a long while.
I like owning my timeshares at the JC. The location cannot be beat. And the units (three different floor plans) are quite spacious and well-appointed. Though I have fixed weeks, I can call up anytime and if there's a vacancy, a unit is mine for the asking. And when Cosmo opens, it'll add a whole new dimension to ownership.
Of course, since I inherited the units, all I have to pay is $450-$550 in the annual fees (different fees for the different-size units). I'm not sure how I'd feel if I'd spent tens of thousands on purchasing them, though Aunt Irene certainly felt she got her money's worth over the 30-odd years she owned them.
