That’s a timely question since, until a couple of weeks ago, there had been little -- in fact, make that zero -- new information following Caesars Entertainment’s abrupt October severing of ties with the Gansevoort boutique New York hotel brand that had been slated to run the accommodation side of the reinvented Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon (formerly Barbary Coast).
The latest news is that the baby has finally been named and that the property at the northeast corner of the Strip and Flamingo will henceforward be known not, as the ever-mischievous VitalVegas blog speculated, but as ... The Cromwell.
The Cromwell? The current writer is a Brit and could think of only one Cromwell perhaps noteworthy enough to have a Las Vegas resort-casino named for him. However, since Oliver Cromwell was a seventeenth century Puritan whose regime was responsible for clamping down on any kind of partying whatsoever, it seemed a distinctly odd choice for an American casino-and-nightclub establishment. At a stretch, cutting the king’s head off and declaring England a republic is the kind of unorthodox behavior we could see Las Vegas admiring, and CET ditched their one-time partner in this property over alleged mob ties, which Cromwell would likely also have frowned upon. But still...
Fortuitously, we were referred to an article in Vegas Seven magazine that put us straight. It turns out that this latest incarnation of the property takes its name not from a long-dead and decapitated English politician, but instead from the Cromwell current, "which a quick Wikipedia search will tell you is 'an eastward-flowing subsurface current that extends the length of the equator in the Pacific Ocean' discovered by Townsend Cromwell in 1952." Doh! How did we miss that?
Apparently, the name is meant to invoke uniqueness, since the current is (like all currents?) unique. Nope, we’re still not getting it. Not that we have anything against that moniker, per se, which we’ll grant has a certain innate gravitas for some reason, but of all the unique things in the universe that could have been chosen to resonate with the general public, whose great idea was it to choose an obscure natural phenomenon that has nothing whatsoever to do with the property or its location, and which none of us had ever heard of? Still, ours is not to reason why and at least it’s a complete word, as opposed to a letter of the alphabet. It's still not growing on us, though.
As yet, there has been no official announcement confirming this news, but Seven cites the fact that a trademark for "The Cromwell" was filed December 6 by Caesars License Company, LLC for "services in the nature of casino and gaming activities," in addition to hotel, restaurant and bar services; the website domains CromwellLV.com, TheCromwellLV.com, CromwellLasVegas.com, and TheCromwellLasVegas.com are also registered to the same company, so that would seem to be pretty conclusive.
It doesn’t appear as if the unfortunate Gansevoort hiccup has delayed anything too significantly and the $185-million reinvention of the property, which will include the first restaurant by Food Network star Giada de Lauretiis, plus a rooftop nightclub/beach concept from after-hours king Victor Drai, is set to debut sometime in mid-2014. We notice significant progress with regard to the exterior makeover each time we drive by (something makes us guess that they’ll leave the marquee and signage to last, just in case...)
Since the parting of the ways with the New York hotel brand, CET has apparently decided to run the hotel operations itself, as well as the casino, although we understand that they’re retaining the "boutique" concept and that the hotel will almost be a self-contained entity, as opposed to being an integrated resort-casino. (Does that suggest that the casino may be separately branded? The trademark licensing would seem to imply otherwise, but who knows with this project?) Keep an eye on Today’s News for updates in the New Year.
