You’re referring to the site once held by the New Frontier, which was imploded on Nov. 13, 2007. It had been purchased from Phil Ruffin the previous March for $1.2 billion. New owners El-Ad properties spent a record-setting $35 million per acre to acquire the land. On it, they planned to build a seven-tower, $8 billion reproduction of the Plaza Hotel in New York, which El-Ad also owned.
Before partners Yitzhak Tshuva and Nochi Dankner built anything, however, the Great Recession struck, sending land values through the floor. El-Ad found itself in breach of the loan terms and asked creditors to accept a writedown on their loans. "All told, Tshuva and Dankner are requesting the Las Vegas project creditors to write off approximately $375 million of the loan, which would be equivalent to a haircut of 60 percent," reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
The project slipped into bankruptcy and was subsequently foreclosed upon, putting it in the hands of El-Ad’s creditors. There are no plans for the site at this time. While El-Ad still owned it, Steve Wynn claims he was approached to build a Wynn-branded Plaza on the site. "That would have been an investment of $2 billion and would have created at least another 10,000 regular jobs and another 25,000 to 30,000 indirect jobs. I can do that, and we can get the money." But, he told TV commentator Jon Ralston, fear of President Barack Obama’s "anti-business" policies put him off.
Regardless of whether or not Wynn thought the Plaza was a good investment, making an $8 million-plus investment pay off on the Strip is a difficult proposition at the best of times. Tshuva and Dankner were probably foolhardy to think they could buck the tide, and they paid dearly for it. What may lie in the future for that lot, who can say, but we're not expecting to see any kind of phoenix rising from those (non-existent) ashes anytime soon.
