It was just over a year ago that the announcement came that, in a new partnership with MRI, Morgans Hotel Group was to take over operations of a rebranded THEhotel -- the non-gaming sister property to Mandalay Bay -- under their South Beach brand, which would see the hotel renamed The Delano Las Vegas. The changeover was scheduled to be complete by "late 2013," the branding having been deliberately chosen to appeal to the Latin American and European markets, apparently. (Let's hope it's more successful than similar abortive attempts at the "new" Tropicana, where Nikki Beach and Bagatelle both took forever and a day to open, and promptly closed very soon thereafter.)
Morgans had already become a 90 percent owner of Las Vegas nightlife brand The Light Group when this announcement was made, with the duo already in bed together at the Hard Rock here, so it came as no surprise that an entertainment makeover was part of the package, including the launch of several new restaurants featuring known chefs including Brian Massie and Akira Back, in addition to the debut of a new nightclub.
Since the initial news was broken, there had been something of a deafening silence from the south end of the Strip, and we confess to having been distracted by similar ongoing "boutique" developments at Bill's/Gansevoort, Caesars Palace/Nobu, and Sahara/SLS Vegas, but in early August a delay in the proposed Delano schedule was quietly announced via MRI's quarterly financial-results conference call, at which point a start date of November/December was named, with completion now planned for April 2014.
While much of December had previously been blacked out for stays at THEhotel, there's now widespread availability that month, which seems to confirm the new proposed timeline. However, a call to the concierge at THEhotel Tuesday left us informed that work wasn't even planned to begin now until next April; we're not sure whether to believe this, or if it was the result of a confusion over commencement and completion dates. We recommend interested readers monitor our "Today's News" feature for updates, as and when any concrete information becomes available.
