The Stardust Hotel was a legendary hotel in Las Vegas, with an iconic sign, distinctive building, and playing host to scores of famous acts down the ages. Until, that is, it was demolished in March 2007. Now, it’s just a heap of smouldering rubble, waiting for the new $4 billion Echelon Place to be constructed over its ruins.
This photo set, and others in our new Changing Vegas gallery, shows just how quickly the landscape of Vegas changes. The photo on the left was taken in April 2006, and shows The Stardust in all its glory, standing proudly beneath a glorious blue sky. Fast forward a year, and all that’s left is a smouldering heap of rubble - even the sky’s turned grey! The Stardust is no more, but from its ashes will rise the huge new Echelon Place. Another Vegas icon bites the dust, only to be resurrected as another Vegas mega-resort.
More pictures of the changing face of Vegas after the jump.
The Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas is a luxurious upmarket hotel directly opposite the Fashion Show shopping mall. Built by legendary Vegas resort owner Steve Wynn, The Wynn is a $2.7 billion hotel and casino with 2,716 hotel rooms, 111,000 square foot casino, 22 restaurants and food outlets, and the only golf course in Las Vegas.
The Wynn is currently one of the more impressive hotels on the strip, and certainly outshines its current neighbours. Clad entirely in bronzed glass, the Wynn eschews the themes of other Vegas mega-resorts further south, and focuses instead on pure upmarket luxury.
One of the great things about The Wynn is the beautiful landscaping and waterfalls (not to mention the huge glass structure itself!). Not only is this beautiful in its own right, it makes taking great pictures of Treasure Island and the Fashion Show extremely easy!
See for yourself, with the new Wynn photo gallery that’s now online.
Among the many attractions of The Wynn Hotel is its 18 hole golf course, the only one of its kind in Las Vegas, and which was redeveloped when The Wynn was being constructed.
Playing golf amongst beautiful greenery in the middle of the desert is no odder than anything else in Las Vegas, although the site of rolling expanses of lush green lawn certainly makes you do a double-take as you travel past it on the Monorail (above).
However, with spiralling land prices, the temptation to cash in on the huge plot of land on which the golf course sits has encouraged Steve Wynn, The Wynn’s owner, to consider redeveloping it. So if golf’s your game, and you fancy playing in the middle of a desert, better get your round in soon (if you can swallow the $500 per round it costs!), as Wynn has plans…big plans!
The North end of the Vegas strip has being going mad recently, with four new multi-billion dollar casino and hotel resorts currently under construction, and another one about to begin now that El Ad has bought the ageing Frontier and has plans to knock it down and build, yup, another multi-billion dollar casino and hotel!
All this construction work has been encircling the aged Circus Circus hotel, which already looks a bit shabby, but will soon look as bad as The Frontier does compared to its shiny new neighbours The Wynns.
Any thoughts that Circus Circus would be next on the implosion list are soon quashed, however, as its owners, MGM Mirage, are already spending $7.7 billion on Project CityCenter further south of the strip (between the Monte Carlo and The Bellagio), and not even the mighty MGM Mirage could afford to splash out on two huge multi-billion dollar projects at the same time…
…could they?…
Just when you thought you’d seen all the new mega-hotels that are under construction in Vegas, up pops another one! The Fontainebleau will be a $2.8 billion condo hotel and casino that will add yet more rooms, convention space and shopping (of course!) to what is an already seemingly overcrowded city.
The Fontainbleau is being built directly opposite Circus Circus on what used to be the unfashionable north end of the strip (unless you count clowns as the height of fashion!).
However, with the Wynn Encore, Palazzo and Echelon Place all currently under construction in the neighbourhood, and the Frontier scheduled to be replaced by a new Plaza Hotel complex, the north is being transformed into the hot new place to be.
More details of the Las Vegas Fontainebleau after the jump.
I go to Las Vegas on business, presenting at various conferences. This year (2007), the conference was held at the Orleans Hotel, which, given that it’s not actually on the Strip, is not a hotel I’d ever visited before. Indeed, such is its location that you’d never even know it existed unless you actually looked for it.
Driving up to The Orleans doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that you’re about to arrive at the most happening place in Vegas, either. The Orleans seems to be situated pretty much in the middle of a generic industrial estate that could be anywhere in the world!
But despite its location, The Orleans is actually alright. Granted there are better hotels to stay at in Vegas, but The Orleans has two things going for it: it’s really relaxed, with some great bars and a really interesting interior; and it’s cheap! It’s a great combination of bargain Vegas without the tackiness that cheapness sometimes implies (I’m thinking Circus Circus here!)
You also get some interesting views, with New York New York and the Mandalay Bay clearly visible on the horizon, lending a kind of surreal backdrop to what otherwise would be an ordinary car park!
To give you a better idea of The Orleans, I’ve added a new Orleans Hotel gallery, which shows you what I’m going on about. It’s not the best hotel in Vegas, but if you’re on a budget, you could do much, much worse!
The New Frontier hotel and casino has been sold by Phil Ruffin to Elad Properties who intend to implode the Frontier and replace it with a $5 billion hotel based on New York’s Plaza Hotel. Ruffin had plans to implode the Frontier later this year and develop a $2.6 billion Swiss-themed resort called the Montreux, which I wrote about only two days ago!
Now though, he’s decided that the better option is to sell to Elad Properties for $1.2 billion, and let them take the risk of competing with the Frontier’s huge new neighbours that are currently being built.
This is the New Frontier Hotel on the north side of the Vegas Strip. The photo was taken in 2005 on my first visit to Vegas, and was one of the first hotels I saw. I was staying in Circus Circus (as ever), and was walking up the strip, and had no idea what to expect. The Frontier, with Gilley’s bar and its giant sign proudly proclaiming “Cold Beer, Dirty Girls!” was exactly what I was expecting of Vegas - tacky on a gigantic scale!
Which was part of the reason why I was so amazed as I carried on walking up the strip and saw that the real Vegas is nothing like the impression that the Frontier gives.
And that’s exactly why The New Frontier’s days are numbered…
Paris in the springtime is no match for Paris in Las Vegas, but rather than telling you all about this amazing looking hotel, I thought it best to post some photos I took of it on my last visit. You can see Vegas’s Paris Hotel from a variety of vantage points, from up close, to just behind The Bellagio.
In fact, seeing Paris in all its glory from The Bellagio, with its dancing fountains in the foreground, is one of the best sights you can see in Vegas, and is a must-see if you ever find yourself there.
Check out all the pics at the Paris Hotel photo gallery.
Vegas hotels used to be a thing of, well, gaudy cheesiness! Circus Circus, Excalibur, and even, to some degree, the huge black pyramid that is the Luxor, all scream novelty at you, and don’t exactly make the place look upmarket.
All that’s changing now, though, and fast. The more recent hotels, from the Bellagio onwards, have all gone progressively upmarket, and newer ones, such as The Wynn and the new hotels under construction, are all top-class 5 star establishments with stunning designs.
This sense of upmarketness is brought dramatically home by these stunning pics I managed to take in April from my room at Circus Circus. The day itself was cold and windy, and there was even rain (it felt just like home in the UK, in fact!), but the payback was the glorious sunset gleaming off the Wynn, with dramatic rolling clouds lending an almost mystical quality to the construction work going on at The Palazzo, Wynn Encore and Echelon Place.
In Vegas, it seems, even the construction sites are glorious!
Check out the much larger photos in the Vegas Construction gallery.
