Going along with today's QOD (3/11/18) concerning construction projects, I just returned from Vegas and noticed a lot of what appears to be initial site work going on in the area behind the High Roller and the Westin. What is planned for that area?
What you saw is the preparation for Caesars Forum.
Convention business is all the rage now in Las Vegas (see Wynn Paradise Park) and Caesars Entertainment is getting in on the action with a 550,000-square-foot meeting center. When completed and if everything goes according to plan, it will have the world’s two largest pillar-less ballrooms. The $375 million edifice will be connected to Harrah’s, the Flamingo Las Vegas, the Linq, and Linq Promenade with pedestrian bridges (the Las Vegas Monorail impedes foot traffic between the Forum site and those locations).
The convention center will occupy more than 18 acres. It will have four large ballrooms (which can be converted to 100 breakout rooms), plus sundry boardrooms. In addition, there will be a 100,000-square-foot outdoor plaza. Caesars promises illumination via natural daylight and a neutral color palette that “offers endless branding opportunities … With meeting space all on one level, load-in will be simple and convenient.”
To put Caesars Forum into context, consider that MGM Resorts International’s Mandalay Bay Event Center has more than two million square feet of meeting and event space, a massive footprint recently enlarged by 350,000 square feet and 990 parking spaces, at a cost of $70 million. MGM spent another $170 million enlarging the Aria convention center to a half-million square feet. MGM Grand has a stand-alone, 600,000-square-foot convention center that is being enlarged by 250,000 square feet, with a 5,500-square-foot outdoor courtyard for private events.
When Park MGM is fully converted from Monte Carlo it will boast 77,000 square feet of meeting space, although this is what MGM’s Sandy Zanella describes as “innovative, non-traditional meetings spaces with flexible design will fill an unmet need in Las Vegas for small groups.” This too will include al fresco meeting areas. MGM doesn’t break out the cost of this new Madison Meeting Center & Idea Studio, but it sounds like it represents a substantial chunk of the $500 million MGM is spending to make over Monte Carlo.
Over at Venetian, Sands Expo Center — one of the most lavish convention spaces in Las Vegas — sprawls across 2,250,000 square feet, although it's relatively stingy with parking spaces: 300. Still, it plays host to some of Las Vegas’ most prominent conventions, including Global Gaming Expo. A couple of years back, owner Sheldon Adelson (the visionary who saw that the future of Las Vegas lay in conventions) floated the idea of augmenting it with a giant arena that could support events on the scale of political conventions. However, Adelson seems to have moved on from that plan, especially after he parted company with the Oakland Raiders, and is now putting all of his focus into Macau and Japan.
Of course, the grandaddy of all meeting spaces is the Las Vegas Convention Center, which sprawls over 73 acres, including nearly two million square feet of exhibit space, 145 meeting rooms (241K square feet), and 225,000 square feet of lobby alone. The indoor space can be augmented with outdoor exhibit acreage for events like the Conexpo/Con-Agg (think big tractors). If all goes according to plan, 14 million square feet of additional structures will be built onto the west end of the extant Convention Center (including 600,000 more square feet of exhibit space), at a cost of $860 million, bringing it out across the old Riviera site and giving the Las Vegas Convention Center & Visitors Authority that most desirable of cachets: a spot on the Las Vegas Strip. The targeted completion date is to be ready for the Consumer Electronics Show of 2021. Better get those picks and shovels moving.
