Wynn Resorts’ board of directors has given the OK to a .5 billion expansion in Las Vegas.
The news was delivered during a conference call with analysts to announce the company’s first-quarter results, which saw EBITDA surge 42 percent over the same period last year, boosted by improved operations on the Strip and a strong performance from the new Wynn Palace in Macau’s Cotai resort district.
Earnings came in at $1.24 per share, up 31 cents over last year and beating Wall Street estimates. Total revenues were up year on year by $100 million to $1.48 billion.
Construction of Paradise Park, as the Strip expansion is called, is slated to begin in December on the site of a 130-acre golf course the company owns just behind the Las Vegas Strip. Plans call for a new hotel tower, convention space and restaurants and attractions that include a white sand beach, a 20-acre lagoon and a pedestrian promenade. The hotel tower would not be part of the first phase of the project, however.
“We’ve got all these great ideas,” Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn said during the call?the aim, he said, being to appeal to families as well as to the lucrative convention market.
Wynn said the development will provide a “tremendous uptick in the value of our surrounding real estate.”
“We have no better use for our money,” he added. “We keep $1.5 billion or $2 billion in the parent company and this would allow us to take the most conservative, but the most dynamic approach to creating this.”
