Five Las Vegas Strip veterans have joined the executive team at Resorts World Las Vegas as the $4 billion casino hotel gears up for the opening of its first phase at the end of next year.
Scott Sibella, who joined the megaresort as president after eight years as president of the MGM Grand, hailed the new hires, each one “hand-selected for their extensive leadership experience in the hospitality and gaming industry,” he said.
“Each has many years of demonstrated proficiency and excellence in their respective disciplines to ensure the successful completion of our highly anticipated resort.”
They are: Chris Nordling, who will serve as chief financial officer; Max Tappeiner, appointed senior vice president of operations; Bill McArthur, named chief information officer; Bart Mahoney, named vice president of food and beverage; and Michael Peltyn, who will serve as senior vice president of human resources.
Nordling spent 20 years with MGM Resorts International in a variety of senior roles, including CFO of the Mirage, Bellagio and CityCenter.
Tappeiner, who will oversee the property’s hotel, security, facilities, sales, marketing and revenue departments, brings 12 years’ experience with Mandarin Oriental that included the company’s opening at CityCenter and two hotel openings in New York.
McArthur brings to his new role more than 20 years of IT leadership, including positions with Las Vegas Sands’ Venetian and Palazzo resorts and with Scientific Games.
Mahoney has more than 25 years’ F&B experience in Las Vegas and internationally for Wynn Resorts and MGM.
Peltyn has held leadership roles in HR for MGM at Bellagio and at CityCenter’s Aria and Vdara resorts.
As the first ground-up casino hotel on the Strip since the Cosmopolitan in 2010, Resorts World, the brainchild of the Malaysia-based Genting resort conglomerate, is expected to herald a renaissance at the north end of the Strip, a vibrant casino corridor in the middle of the 20th century that’s been largely vacant through the first two decades of the 21st, save for Wynn Las Vegas and Encore.
The last decade opened with several multibillion-dollar projects on the drawing board for the area, but they were abandoned when the 2008-09 financial crisis hit.
Among them was Boyd Gaming’s Echelon. Echelon was to occupy the site across from Wynn Las Vegas where Boyd demolished the aging Stardust. But there, too, the recession halted construction.
In 2013, Boyd sold the 87-acre site to Genting for $350 million. Genting immediately announced plans for its Asian-themed Resorts World. It was originally set to open in 2016. But ground wasn’t broken until 2015, and another year passed before meaningful construction started. Plans now call for 3,400 hotel rooms and a 100,000-square-foot gaming floor in Phase I, along with a variety of restaurants and entertainment and meetings space, an artificial lake and possibly a pedestrian flyover connecting the resort to Wynn Las Vegas.
