[Editor’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series on the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas by Deke Castleman, who spent the first four days after grand opening inspecting the place. Deke has a strong opinion on how the "Cosm" is a microcosm of today’s Las Vegas. He also has a personal connection to the Cosm.]
Good question. Interesting answer.
Everything about the Cosmopolitan is interesting to me. It seems different from all previous megaresorts in almost every way.
It starts with the size of its footprint: 8.7 acres, slightly larger than the manmade lake at Bellagio next door.
By further comparison, all of Bellagio occupies 120 acres (big enough for 14 Cosmopolitans). CityCenter takes up 67. As a historical aside, all that acreage used to be the Dunes’s huge golf course (and the old Boardwalk property); the course was so big, it took up almost all the land between Flamingo and Tropicana on the west side of the Strip. It was owned by Japanese investor Masao Nangaku for five years, till he sold it to Steve Wynn for $75 million, quite the deal at less than a half-million per acre. Wynn imploded the Dunes on the same night as he opened Treasure Island in November 1993, then started planning Bellagio. When MGM bought out Mirage Inc., it acquired the rest of the acreage, then started planning CityCenter. Those are Cosmopolitan’s neighbors.
Cosm, by contrast, occupies the parking lot of the Jockey Club.
So the Cosm, at just under 3,000 rooms, 100,000 square feet of casinos space, a dozen restaurants, and nearly 200,000 square feet of meeting and retail space, is a big joint stuffed onto a tiny lot. Even New York-New York, which I myself described as a postage-stamp lot when it opened, is nearly 20 acres.
Thus, another unique aspect of the Cosm is that it sports a vertical, rather than horizontal, orientation. The casino and most of the bars are on the first floor, retail is on the second, restaurants and more bars are on the third, and the pool area, which looks directly onto the Strip, is on the fourth. It all surrounds the central escalators in a tight circle, so it all makes immediate spatial sense -- easy to see it all and remember your way around.
The main pool area, last stop on the escalators, is also one of a kind. It overlooks the Strip from about 100 feet up; in fact, the five cabanas are open on both ends, facing both the main pool and the Strip. It’s also, as yet, open to the public; one of the restaurants, the Overlook Grill, is up there. The big 65-foot Cosm digital message marquee towers above it; it’s perfectly located be used, reportedly, for art and entertainment in addition to the typical advertising (more on that in a minute). There’s a cool lounge with foosball and pool tables, plus a dozen small screens.
Several terraces rise from and face the pool deck and the whole fourth floor can be used as a concert venue accommodating, reportedly, up to 3,000 in the audience. Brandon Flowers of the Killers performed there on opening night and according to Rehan Choudhry, Cosm’s entertainment director, most of the acts will too. In addition, in a first for Las Vegas entertainment, Flowers’ three-song set was simulcast on The Cosmopolitan's marquee, meaning passersby on the Las Vegas Strip were be able to watch the concert live on the 65-foot-tall LED marquee. "The idea is, if we've got a phenomenal concert, there's no reason the three hundred thousand people on Las Vegas Boulevard shouldn't be a part of that experience," says Choudhry.
All that said, Cosm has Cold Play and Jay-Z booked for New Year’s Eve and they’re playing in a ballroom (invitation only).
To sum up, the pool floor and ballroom are the extent of the "showroom" at the Cosm. This joint’s just too small for even a compact theater. So the answer is no. No anchor show.
Tune in tomorrow when we examine whether the Cosm ends an old era -- or begins a new one.
