We take it that you mean Fontainebleau. Owner Carl Icahn has been sitting on that litigation-plagued property for years, having bought it out of bankruptcy for $150 million, waiting for Strip land values to return to former levels. An unconfirmed media report had him turning down $14 million an acre for the site -- which may have been a mistake on Icahn’s part: The nearby Echelon land was liquidated by Boyd Gaming at $4 million an acre and James Packer just picked up the former New Frontier land at $8 million an acre. That’s the site where Strip land values peaked at $33 million an acre in 2007. It has been speculated that the land under Fontainebleau is still worth more than the structural steel which sits upon it.
Icahn’s position on the tower has not changed since 2010. At that time, he said that he would consider his options when the Las Vegas economy manifested recovery. For the ensuing four years, he has maintained silence on the topic.
As though to make it crystal clear that Icahn has no intention of completing the 68-story eyesore, the construction crane was removed last May. Stafford Tower Crane of America disassembled the crane with the intention of moving it out of state. Stafford told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he "had hoped the removal would not attract publicity" – difficult to do with such a massive structure, located on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the land. Purchaser Kelly Hadland, of Compass Equipment of Arizona, told the paper, "It's been a big challenge but our goal is to get it off the building and send it to its new home."
Despite the renewal of activity around Fountainebleau, which includes SLS Las Vegas and Genting Berhad’s nascent Resorts World Las Vegas, "any analysts have said it would be more cost-effective to demolish the Fontainebleau rather than try to finish it," according to the R-J’s Howard Stutz.
A month ago, blog "Vegas Chatter" passed along a Fontainebleau rumor from a broker identified only as "Warren K." Mr. K let it be known that Chinese-based fund Handen Investment Group was interested and "an offer is possibly in the works." Handen describes itself as manager of "capital in excess of $1.5 billion via numerous urban-construction and cultural-tourism developments, as well as large-scale real estate projects." It sounds like Handen would be a good fit for Fontainebleau, but nothing more has been heard of the rumor and, as with everything Fontainebleau-related, it comes down to Icahn’s (undisclosed) asking price.
