Question of the Day - 13 January 2018

Your guess is as good as ours.

The land in question was once intended for Akita Plaza, where the resurrected Sahara rollercoaster would have arisen, and for the now-defunct SkyVue Ferris wheel. It’s been on the open market for well over a year, but no one seems to want to bite on the 38-acre grab bag of parcels. Incidentally, had owner/developer Howard Bulloch’s timetable gone according to plan, the SkyVue wheel would have been spinning for almost five years now. However, the market has clearly determined that Las Vegas is only big enough for one Ferris wheel.

Bulloch has been trying to monetize this land as long as we can remember. A London-themed casino resort was once planned; it was hoped that Brit Richard Branson of Virgin might invest. One problem, however, with building anything in that area is its proximity to McCarran Airport, meaning that any project would have to be height-approved and the FAA can be very strict.

Then there’s the problem of the price tag. He wants $10 million an acre for a relatively narrow strip of land that now has a mass shooting connected to it. To put the price in prospective, the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority bought up the sprawling Riviera site for $7 million an acre and Steve Wynn recently nabbed the old New Frontier land for $335 million; though he paid $8.4 million per, that acreage once went for $1.3 billion. 

For a starker comparison, Penn National Gaming paid $10.5 million an acre for the Tropicana and got a money-spinning casino for its troubles. Bulloch is asking almost the same amount of money with only bare dirt in return … that and the two stanchions of SkyVue, which the new owner would have to demolish. 

It’s possible that the Bulloch land will become, as you say, something new, but we’re not holding our breath. We think it will require a lower price tag and a lot of ingenuity.