As you can see from this shot, the Wynn already dominates the older Mirage, while the new Palazzo and Wynn Encore will be bigger still. Add Echelon Place and the 63-storey Fontainebleau to the mix, and the older hotels are in danger of disappearing beneath their shadows!

The irony is that The Mirage was one of the first mega-resorts to open way back in 1989, and made its own near-neighbours, such as the now-imploded Boardwalk, look puny in comparison. Now, it seems, The Mirage and hotels of its era are getting a taste of their medicine, as Vegas goes bigger still.

As you can see from the pic above, the new hotels around The Wynn are all around 640 foot tall, with the Encore at Wynn being the tallest of the lot at 653 feet. Both Echelon Place and the Fontainebleau should be taller still, while the Crown Las Vegas project that hasn’t begun construction yet, but is all set to go, will be a gigantic 1,888 foot monster – nearly twice the height of the Stratosphere.

Quite what this will do to the Vegas skyline is anyone’s guess. Tall towers give great views only as long there are no other tall towers between you and the view! With every new building going up fighting to be bigger than the last, each new hotel could drown out the view it’s trying so hard provide.

That said, these huge new behemoths will certainly provide a fascinating new skyline as you look north up the strip. If they’re successful, though, I can’t help but wonder just how long the now-tiny looking older players, such as The Mirage and Treasure Island, have left before their owners think that blowing them up and building even taller buildings in their place would be a much more profitable use of the land on which they sit!

[Source: VegasTodayAndTomorrow]

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.



Perhaps more startling still is this next set of photos, which shows what’s happening around the old Stardust.

The photo on the left was again taken in April 2006, when The Stardust was still very much alive (though not sure if the same could be said for Debbie Reynolds!). The Wynn stands proudly as a shining beacon of modernity, without any neighbours of note, while the world-famous iconic Stardust sign was proudly telling the world that Debbie Reynolds had not, in fact, left the building (though hopefully she did before they imploded it!).

Again, fast forward a year, and The Stardust’s famous sign is now just a battered shell of its former glory, while The Wynn finds itself with new neighbours hastily being constructed, in the form of The Encore at Wynn (in front of The Wynn) and The Palazzo (behind).

Such is the pace of construction around the north end of the Vegas strip, that I’ve no idea what to expect when I return next year. The Palazzo is meant to be finished at the end of 2007 (though some doubt it will make this deadline), while the Encore at Wynn is scheduled to open at the end of 2008.

Meanwhile, the 5,280 room Echelon Place, the new $4 billion mega resort that’s being built on the ashes of The Stardust, isn’t due to open until 2010, but you can bet that this time next year, work will be well underway.

Vegas seems to be a different town every time you go, which can make for an unnerving visit at times, but certainly makes your pics more interesting. Sometimes it’s almost as though you only need to set your camera looking at a building dor a day or two before someone comes along and demolishes it!

You can see more photos of The Stardust before and after its implosion in the Stardust/Echelon Place gallery, which shows the pics above in much bigger format.

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.