A long string of unfulfilled promises -- that’s the Golden Palm in a nutshell. Although it was built in 1980, the hotel looks a lot older and crappier than that, especially after spending years in mothballs. The former Travelodge and Howard Johnson hotel was acquired in 1999 by real estate developer Marvin Lipschultz. A colorful character, the sort of dreamer who fit right in with Las Vegas, Lipschultz had sandwiched a stint as the producer of B-movie Terror on Alcatraz between spates of building residential properties in Denver, Aspen and Las Vegas. He was even Hugh Hefner’s next-door neighbor in Chicago for a time.
The Golden Palm was never really much of a hotel-casino, hosting a modest 57 slot machines. Lipschultz’s first attempt to reinvent it came in 2002, when he proposed a $115 million, Miami-themed casino resort to be called South Beach. The 320-foot, 24-story hotel tower would be mostly comprised of timeshare units and there was to be a 24,000-square-foot pool deck. Unlike the Golden Palm, South Beach was to have a proper casino, with 738 slot machines, 10 table games and a modest sports book spread across 26,500 square feet – all this crammed into a three-acre footprint on Tropicana Avenue. Despite opposition by Station Casinos and MGM Mirage (both of which had nearby gaming interests of their own) the project was approved.
Unfortunately for Lipschultz, his timing coincided with a local construction boom and he couldn’t raise the capital to build South Beach. Enter chef Charlie Palmer. In May 2006, the duo announced that the Golden Palm site would give way to Charlie Palmer Hotel. It would be even taller (35 stories) than South Beach – take that, MGM! -- and have a 400-unit mix of hotel rooms and condos (the property was zoned for 560 units and a 492-foot height), with the latter starting at $400,000 apiece. In addition to three restaurants, a spa and a penthouse nightclub, there would be three penthouse residences. The project was budgeted at $400 million and intended for mid-2008 completion, which would have placed its opening square in the middle of the Las Vegas condo-casino meltdown.
In any event, Palmer (whose long-promised boutique hotel at downtown's Symphony Park has also failed to materialize) and Lipschultz had an acrimonious falling out, resulting in a protracted breach-of-contract suit. That put Lipschultz back at Square One … One Trop, to be precise. A $300 million hotel concept, it proved as difficult to finance as the South Beach and Charlie Palmer projects had been. Worse, since the Charlie Palmer Hotel was envisioned as a non-casino establishment, Lipschultz had surrendered the Golden Palm’s gambling license, lowering the value of the property.
That made it hard to market the Golden Palm when Lipschultz closed it and put it up for sale at an astronomical $47 million. Aside from its lack of a casino license, the property was also hobbled by being on the wrong side of I-15 and hemmed in by roads on all sides of its three acres, making horizontal expansion impossible. No purchase materialized, not even after Lipschultz offered a 33 percent discount.
While Las Vegas staggered through the Great Recession, Lipschultz turned his attention from the Golden Palm to producing shows like iCandy Burlesque: The Show at Miracle Mile. In April 2013, he announced he would be bringing the Golden Palm back as a restaurant and karaoke bar. He even stocked up on food and liquor. Lipschultz told the Las Vegas Sun, "We just need a couple really good ideas. But I feel good that something’s gonna happen." Nothing did.
We’d normally say that you should stay tuned for further developments. But when the subject is the Golden Palm, we’ll believe something is happening with the property when it actually does.
