The empty Fontainebleau on the north end of the Las Vegas Strip is going up for sale, billionaire investor Carl Icahn announced.
Icahn hired the CBRE Group to handle the sale of the property, which was intended to be a casino and resort. Work on it ceased during the Great Recession, when many Las Vegas projects stalled due to a lack of funding.
“I think Las Vegas still has a fair amount of room to run,” Icahn said in a recent interview. “But I’d rather sell it than take the time and energy to build it out, which we have been considering doing
Icahn in 2010 bought the Fontainebleau for $150 million and anticipates it selling for $650 million. It originally was intended to be a $3 billion development.
The Fontainebleau resides on 22 acres of real estate on the east side of the Las Vegas Strip about a quarter mile north of Wynn Resorts’ Encore and Wynn casinos and close to the Las Vegas Convention Center and its campus.
The sale announcement comes about a week after city officials discussed possibly ordering placement of a decorative exterior wrap on the building to prevent it from being an eyesore. The Fontainebleau is the second-tallest building in Las Vegas, surpassed only by the Stratosphere’s 1,500-foot tower.
The Fontainebleau is designed to contain 2,800 hotel rooms and 930 condominiums, plus 543,000 square feet of event space, 300,000 square feet for retail, a 155,000 square-foot casino, and a 3,200-seat theater.
While Icahn hopes to get $650 million for the property, CBRE says it will cost about $1 billion to complete the project and open it to the public.
