Location, location, location. Billionaire James Packer leaked preliminary designs over the weekend for the new billion Alon Las Vegas complex, located just south of another billion project, Resorts World Las Vegas. Alon is scheduled to open in 2018, and will feature an 1100-room hotel taking up two towers, a nightclub, ballroom, pool and villas. The billion figure was estimated by Deutsche Bank.
Packer, chairman and half-owner of Crown Resorts, picked up the land for $280 million, after the price was reduced in a deal with Oaktree Capital Management. The parcel was originally purchased by the El-Ad Group of Israel, who paid $1.24 billion in 2007 for the New Frontier. The group had plans of building an $8 billion mega-resort in its place, similar to its Plaza Hotel in New York, but then the recession showed its ugly head.
If the Alon project does in fact get up off the ground and running, people can scratch off one more undeveloped piece of land on the Strip. Other areas of land have popped in the news lately, such as “Project Jackpot” which includes a Walgreens, Travelodge motel and Harley-Davidson Café on the east side of Las Vegas just south of Harmon Avenue.
Speaking of Harmon, you also have the Harmon Hotel Tower, which had construction halted after 26 stories were built and it was deemed unsafe and demolished. The tower was set to be a part of MGM Resorts International’s CityCenter, but the company is now going back to the drawing board with what to do.
Staying with the Harmon theme, just a little further east on Harmon you have the site that was supposed to feature a multi-use project, named Las Ramblas, to be built by a company George Clooney was part of, which goes back 10 years. The project was scrapped, the land was purchased, then combined with adjacent land, before the company that owned the land defaulted, putting the 60-acre site back on the market.
Just north of the Riviera you have the site of Fontainebleau, which sits, partially constructed, where it has stayed like that for several years. Heading a little further north on the Strip you have an area which is tentatively scheduled to be home to a $1 billion-plus resort built by former UNLV and NBA player Jackie Robinson. The hope was to feature an arena to lure in an NBA team, but since a groundbreaking ceremony took place last fall, no progress has been made.
To round out this group, you have to go just a little bit west of the Strip on Sahara, where an Asian-themed project with a boutique hotel named the Lucky Dragon has begun construction. The hotel will feature 200 rooms, and be pretty close to Resorts World Las Vegas.
