One of the lead contractors on James Packer’s Alon is suing developers of the aborted Las Vegas Strip super-resort for breach of contract, copyright infringement and deceptive trade practices, among other claims.
The action, filed by YWS Design & Architecture in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, names various landowners and holding companies as defendants. They include an entity controlled by the Elardi family, which owned the demolished New Frontier casino hotel that Alon was intended to replace. The company, Tishmar, had leased a portion of the 34-acre site to the Packer consortium, which included the Australian billionaire’s Crown Resorts, investment giant Oaktree Capital Management and former Wynn Las Vegas President Andrew Pascal.
The suit does not name Crown or Oaktree or any executives individually, but Pascal, who has said he is still “actively pursuing” the project, issued a statement blasting the allegations as “baseless” and saying his group would be filing a counter-claim against YWS.
YWS and their attorneys at the firm of Greenberg Traurig did not respond to requests for comment, local news reports said.
The New Frontier was torn down to make way for a luxury megaresort called Plaza Las Vegas that was abandoned when the 2008-09 recession hit.
Packer’s group acquired the property through foreclosure in 2014 and hired YWS the following year. Plans were to break ground on Alon in late 2015. But Crown, the project’s principal backer, reportedly had trouble raising funds. By early 2016, the developers began to fall behind on their payments to YWS, the lawsuit claims, and temporarily suspended design work in mid-2016. Shortly after, they terminated the contract with the firm and “demanded payment” of nearly $500,000 from YWS, the suit alleges.
YWS filed a $3.4 million lien against the property last September then lifted it so the two sides could enter mediation. However, they failed to resolve the dispute, and last November YWS refiled its lien.
