Last week brought a bit of hopeful news. Moody’s Investor Services gave a favorable rating to a $300 million debt offering for the Sahara, which closed last year. The loan is intended to help underwrite a $744 million reinvention of the property as "SLS Las Vegas." We think they could do better on the same, which sounds like a cargo ship rather than a casino, but it’s a positive development all the same.
Owner Sam Nazarian intends to redo the hotel rooms, which will be slightly reduced in number. A beer garden will go where the rollercoaster (rumored to have been sold to Circus Circus, but not yet dismantled) now stands and SLS will feature two nightclubs as well. All of the casino and hotel’s furnishings and décor having been stripped, sold or otherwise dispersed, the SLS/Sahara will bear little resemblance to its predecessor. At 744 million clams, this would be the most expensive casino re-do in the current wave, far more than the $145 million lavished on the Tropicana or the considerably smaller amounts being spent at downtown’s Plaza ($35 million) or the Riviera ($50 million).
As for Fontainebleau, the large, blue building you mention, it doesn’t appear to be anywhere close to the "70% completed" figure that is bandied about like gospel. Nor does owner Carl Icahn – who bought it out of foreclosure – have any intention of finishing the project, which would be a $1 billion-plus undertaking. He’s made it clear that he’s sitting on the property until the Las Vegas Strip turns around and will then contemplate his options. Once the underlying real estate becomes sufficiently valuable, he’ll almost certainly sell and let "F-blew" become somebody else’s problem.
Also on indefinite hold is the unfinished St. Regis condo tower between Venetian and Palazzo, home to retailers Barney’s and Walgreens. Las Vegas Sands COO Michael Leven has publicly contemplated capping the St. Regis at its current, truncated height . In the meantime, its faux façade of drapery will remain intact.
Boyd Gaming is keeping extremely quiet on the future of its Echelon project, at the former site of the Stardust. It was the first Strip megaresort-to-be to get mothballed. The company is pretty heavily in debt at this point and any resumption of Echelon will be on a reduced scale, especially with partners Morgans Hotel Group and mall developer General Growth Properties being out of the picture. It is generally believed that resumption of Echelon will be the signal that it’s fiscally safe to build on the Strip again, but that’s probably still years away.
If a "project" consists of nothing but empty land, it can be consigned to the never-going-to-happen file. For instance, MGM Resorts International was going to erect a second CityCenter at the north end of the Strip, opposite the Sahara, but that’s off the drawing board, for a variety of reasons. Ditto the CityCenter-like "Viva," which Station Casinos hoped to build where its Wild Wild West now stands. El-Ad Properties has been writing off its $35 million/acre purchase of the New Frontier, spelling the end of its seven-tower megaresort plans. And the enormous skyscraper (Crown Las Vegas) once slated for the old Wet ‘n Wild water-park site was scrapped long ago, as was the "Silver State Arena" subsequently planned for the same acreage. So, depending on how drastically the Sahara is reinvented, there won’t be a "new" Strip casino in the foreseeable future.
Images appear courtesy of VegasTodayandTomorrow.com.
