Question of the Day - 19 August 2021

Had everything gone according to plan, the unfinished building underneath that epic tarp would have been a 465-foot-tall (43-story) St. Regis condominium tower. 

In September 2008, Las Vegas Sands announced an agreement with Starwood Hotels & Resorts to flag the in-progress $450 million development (built on the site of an old Walgreens) as the St. Regis Residences at the Venetian Palazzo, with 398 private luxury units. A $2 billion profit was projected and a March 2010 opening date was planned. Ground had been broken in early 2007 and, optimistically, Sands had begun offering units for sale in September of that year.

However, Sands had mistimed the condo tower-to-be, whose cost escalated to $600 million. Not only had the condominium bubble in Las Vegas burst, but the Great Recession brought construction of the St. Regis to a screeching halt in November 2008, never to be resumed. A year later, Sands officially said work would begin when the economy improved, but evidently it never sufficiently did.

Had it been, the condos would have been from 1,700 square feet to more than 10,000 square feet, fully furnished or vacant, complete with butler service and private pools in the larger units. 

After staring at the construction equivalent of a living skeleton for three years, then-Sands COO Michael Leven had it draped in the trompe l’oeil toupée you mentioned.

"I couldn't stand looking at it,” he told reporter Howard Stutz. “One day I was out at the pool and I realized our guests were also looking up and staring at the skeleton. We put the cover on it and it's held up well. You sometimes forget it's there if you walk by."

Leven promised the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “We’re going to do something with it. We just don’t know what.” Of the company’s condo ambitions, he confessed, “The numbers didn’t work out.” A third hotel-casino was considered (and apparently rejected), as were more hotel rooms.

Fast-forward to 2021. Leven is long gone and Sands still doesn’t have a plan for the 13-year-old eyesore. Now, of course, it gets to kick that particular can down the road — and over to new owners Apollo Management and Vici Properties. When their purchase of the Venetian and Palazzo (and newly renamed Venetian Expo Center) closes at the end of this year, Apollo and Vici get to figure out what do with it.