What will become of the land where Stardust and The Frontier used to be? Everyone was in such a hurry to tear the old hotels down, and build the new megaresorts. Now the land is vacant and I don't see much progress on any new hotels.
It'll probably be a long time before you see anything happen with the old Frontier site. Earlier this year, Crown Resorts officially abandoned its plans for Alon, a luxury resort that was intended for that acreage. it's now up for grabs and there don’t seem to be a lot of takers, even with Strip land going for a relative bargain. (When Boyd Gaming sold the Stardust site in early 2013, it got $4 million an acre for land that had been assessed at $15 million per acre back in 2007.)
The problem seems to be twofold: Developers are relatively uninterested in the Las Vegas Strip nowadays — almost all the action is overseas — and the north Strip in particular is perceived as isolated, therefore unattractive. A chill in the credit markets hasn't helped prospective developers either.
Genting Group has been wrestling for a long time with the question, “When are you going to build Resorts World Las Vegas?” The company, in its defense, has been doing small-scale incremental site work for some time. But Genting has missed several self-imposed deadlines for converting the bare bones of the abandoned Echelon into architect Paul Steelman’s vision of China on the Strip.
In mid-May, Resorts World got a new boss, construction veteran Edward Farrell. With him came promises of installation of cranes by mid-August and a 1,000-person workforce by early 2018. “We have taken our time to ensure the design is just right. We have already invested over $500 million in the project,” spokesman Matt Levoff assured the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Casino correspondent Richard Velotta blamed Genting’s “slow and meticulous” corporate culture for the delays, adding that the end result of Genting's processes has always been “spectacular.”
Finally, on July 7, actual construction workers were spotted clambering over the Resorts World skeleton, apparently affixing windows to the bones of the building. It’s not much, but it’s a start. Maybe Genting will make its 2020 deadline after all.
