Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming August 2016 24 Resort and Casino into two hotels with the addition of a 5,300-seat theater scheduled to open later this year. Wynn Resorts is planning two major additions. The first, Wynn Plaza, is slated to open in the second half of 2017 and will feature 75,500 square feet of luxury retail on two levels fronting the Strip and incorporating what the company describes as a number of “interactive and experiential opportunities.” The second was unveiled at a special presentation to investors in April. It’s tentatively titled Wynn Paradise Park and will be built on the 130-acre golf course behind the Wynn-Encore complex. Plans call for a 1,000-room hotel, a casino, restaurants, nightlife and 260,000 square feet of conference and meeting space looking out onto a 38-acre lagoon with a beach and a pedestrian promenade that will host nighttime fireworks shows alongside activities like water-skiing, paddle-boarding and parasailing. Another key piece of the future stands just north and east of the Resorts World site. It’s the mammoth, unfinished Fontainebleau. It was reported in late July that buyers might be taking the 68-story hotel off Carl Icahn’s hands and that one of the partners might be the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, owners of Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun, casinos in Pennsylvania and Atlantic City and a megaresort being developed near Incheon International Airport in South Korea. The Fontainebleau was an instant landmark when it arrived on the Strip in 2007, bringing with it a US$3 billion price tag and a luxury offering that seemed perfectly in tune with the exuberance crackling through the US economy before the crash. When its financing collapsed in 2008, the 3,800-room resort was left to languish two-thirds complete, the most glaring symbol of recession-battered Las Vegas. Mr Icahn bought it out of bankruptcy in 2010 for US$150 million. Last November, sensing the time was right, he put it on the market for US$650 million and the July negotiations were reported to be close to that price. It could cost another US$1 billion to complete and get it open, according to some estimates, but the very fact that there are interested investors draws a bold line under the city’s rebound. Less than a mile away, the Las Vegas Convention Center will sit at the hub of an integrated business, MICE and transportation destination – the Las Vegas Global Business District – that will be rising in phases westward from Paradise Road along a small street called Convention Center Drive that opens out practically at Resorts World’s front door. The Convention Center, the third-largest MICE facility in the United States, will grow by 1 million square feet of fresh exhibit space as part of US$1.4 billion worth of new construction aimed at positioning this vital piece of the Las Vegas resort mix to compete well into the 21st century. There will be new meetings, general session and pre-function spaces, a complete makeover of the technological infrastructure, new food and beverage outlets, landscaped public areas and more parking – all of it to be woven together and tied into the larger resort corridor via a network of road, light rail and pedestrian connections. The World Trade Centers Association, a global clearinghouse for trade and investment information, sees the project as a “defining moment” for the gaming mecca. “This overarching vision will be the next evolution of the trade show business in the destination and will launch Las Vegas 25 years ahead of the competition,” the group stated in a recent report. From Genting’s perspective the geography couldn’t be sweeter, says John Knott, who heads the Las Vegas-based Global Gaming Group of commercial property giant CBRE. “You’ve got the Global Business District there along Convention Center Drive, and when you look at Convention Center Drive, there’s the Convention Center anchoring it on the Paradise Road side and Resorts World Las Vegas anchoring the Strip side.” It is, he says, a “fabulous site.” James Rutherford is a US-based writer and editor. He covers the gaming industry from the Atlantic City area. The ambitious Las Vegas Global Business District will be an integrated business, MICE and transportation destination Feature In Focus