What you’re seeing are the remnants of SkyVue and it wasn’t a victim of the recession but rather of hubris. SkyVue was meant to be a 500-foot-tall Ferris wheel (originally 476 feet), with a retail mall at its base. The latter would have been covered with a 30,000-square-foot LED display screen and the SkyVue wheel would have orbited a pair of 50,000-square-foot screens. For an idea of what the finished project would have resembled, see here.
"Located across the Street [sic] from the third largest hotel in the world, Mandalay bay [sic], visitors will stare in amazement at SkyVue’s massive LED screens" reads the grammatically challenged promotional copy, "and towering observation wheel. ‘I want to go there!’" A wine bar and four "world famous" (but unnamed) restaurants were meant to complement the experience.
The $180 million-$300 million project, brainchild of developer Howard Bulloch, was announced in early 2011 and in May of that year a 23,000-pound bearing needed to make the wheel go round was displayed at the site. At the time, Bulloch said, "We expect it to be up and running in time for New Year’s 2012." Whoops. The foundation was not poured until the following March (and required 100 truckloads of concrete). An originally planned 40 gondolas had been cut back to 32 by that point. The deadline was then pushed back to late 2013. Perhaps not coincidentally, Bulloch had truckloads of cable delivered to the site during 2012’s International Council of Shopping Centers. Progress seemed to peter out in July 2012, however, when the twin support columns (247 feet tall each) that you observed were finished.
A year later, the two columns were still awaiting the spindle and yoke that would connect them, which Skyvue’s website promised would be "delivered shortly." But no discernible work has proceeded on the site in the meantime. You can even observe the progress – or lack of same – on SkyVue’s own webcam.
Earlier this year, alluding to the nearby Laughing Jackalope motel, the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Howard Stutz made so bold as to say, "Both the development and the Jackalope are mythical creatures." In early 2012, Specialty Mortgage Corp. of Reno filed a $31.4 million foreclosure against SkyVue, following a failed attempt at a debt restructure. Bulloch apparently paid off the loans to avert the foreclosure. Later that year contractors put liens on the property, which Bulloch retired by borrowing more money. The wages of Nevada prison inmates who worked on the project went unpaid. Components from as far away as Germany were promised to arrive "by May or June," as was a new construction crane. None of that appears to have materialized. What was more seriously lacking was financing. And, as Stutz put it, "without money to complete the project, all you have are pretty pictures."
"We anticipate construction to resume in the next couple of months," insisted Bulloch’s business partner, David Gaffin. But that was in July and there has been nothing to see since. Reported Vegas Inc. correspondent Ed Komenda, "Rumors floating around town indicate the [Caesars Entertainment’s Vegas High Roller wheel] strong financial backing and growing list of tenants may have scared away SkyVue investors, who might now question whether two observation wheels is one too many."
"Every airplane that flies in and out of Vegas will fly past that wheel. And everyone who takes their picture in front of the Las Vegas sign will have our wheel in the background," proclaimed Bulloch, leaving it unclear whether he intended to build a monument or an eyesore. Rarely has so much bombast yielded so little.
Aside from the two columns, Bulloch’s most tangible legacy is to have inspired mockery from the Vital Vegas blog, which dreamt up a SkyVue mascot called Tiny the Tumbleweed*, an allusion to the project’s evident abandonment. As for Bulloch, SkyVue appears to be the latest chapter in a long history of futility in trying to get something, anything, built on land he owns adjacent to McCarran International Airport. Unlike those earlier efforts, SkyVue will not be easy to efface.
*Since we addressed this question, we read the sad, although as-yet-unconfirmed news, that Tiny the Tumbleweed had met a sorry fate; we will keep concerned readers informed if we hear more.
