An agreement was reached last November with the Clark County Commission. (Fountainebleau lies outside the City of Las Vegas – and we bet the city is glad for that.) At that time, Carl Icahn’s representatives appealed for an extension of the period allotted to expand the sidewalk – Fontainebleau has no setback – and improve lighting in the area. County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani seized upon this to threaten to have the county force Fontainebleau to do the work immediately, using money held in escrow for that purpose.
Rather than expend capital on sidewalks, Icahn’s people agreed to "exterior aesthetic upgrades," mostly a fabric-and-paint combination similar to what Las Vegas Sands did with its unfinished St. Regis tower. The coverage would be mostly at ground level, to mask what Giunchigliani called an "empty, gaping mouth that faces the Strip." Icahn’s designers were given until early February to come up with a suitable camouflage and then six months (or until early August) would be allotted for getting started on the wrap.
"It’s their property value that comes into play as well, and anything that can help that north end of the Strip and the value of the property, I would think they’d want to do," Giunchigliani told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. However, as you have observed, it is now well into May and nothing has been done – and, yes, Icahn does have to pay property taxes on Fontainebleau, even as it sits derelict. (The billionaire is shopping the property around for $650 million.)
The good news is that, even though Icahn’s people have pushed the deadline a bit, some coverage of Fontainebleau’s nakedness is on the way, with the blessing of the County Commission. "We’ve seen their plans for the wrap and we expect that it will be up and finished within six months," in other words sometime in November, according to Clark County Public Information Officer Dan Kulin. "It will be 90 feet tall and look like a finished building." So it won’t be a full-on wrap but at least it promises to ameliorate the worst of the unsightliness.
