The resurrection of Las Vegas’ long-dead Fontainebleau will have to wait a couple of years longer, according to the New York real estate developer who plans to open it as a reimagined super-resort called the Drew Las Vegas.
Steven Witkoff, whose Witkoff Group, in partnership with Miami-based developers New Valley, owns the shuttered 67-story monument to the Great Recession, announced the hiring of architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro to create a design for the Drew, and in an upbeat statement said he was pushing back the opening, originally slated for 2020, to 2022 to allow for completion of the new look.
It will be DS+R’s first Las Vegas project and the company’s first in the hospitality industry, according to news reports, which said the New York-based firm has focused mostly on cultural and civic projects. These have included a redesign of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Campus and The Shed in New York; The Broad, a museum of contemporary art in Los Angeles; Zaryadye Park in Moscow; and the Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro.
“We believe Drew Las Vegas is set to usher in the next generation of Las Vegas resorts,” Witkoff said. “It will be unlike anything on the Strip today a truly integrated resort that brings together a unique take on Las Vegas and a curated set of experiences from around the world.”
When the Fontainebleau was announced in 2005, pegged at the time at $3 billion, it was heralded as the savior of the Strip’s scantly developed and largely dormant north end. Then, in 2008, the U.S. real estate bubble imploded, and credit dried up in the global financial crisis that followed, and the Miami developers behind the project, headed by former Mandalay Resort Group President Glenn Schaeffer, ran out of money and declared bankruptcy. The resort, though reported to be 70 percent complete, never opened.
Corporate raider Carl Icahn acquired the property in 2010 for roughly $150 million, sold off much of its interior, then flipped it to Witkoff and New Valley in 2017 for $600 million.
Witkoff’s plans for the Drew—named for his son, who died at 22 of a drug overdose—include 3,780 hotel rooms managed by Marriott International, more than 550,000 square feet of convention and meeting space and an array of retail, restaurant and nightlife attractions.
In a recent interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal he gave a total project price of $3.1 billion which includes the purchase and $1.2 billion in construction costs plus pre-opening expenses and said financing is lined up.
