Until now that is. Grainy though this scanned image is (courtesy of Las Vegas Review Journal’s print edition), this is what the new Fontainebleau will look like when it’s completed at the end of 2009 – and it looks stunning!

Read more on the Fontainebleau hotel after the jump.,

The Fontainebleau is costing $2.9 billion to develop, and will feature a 63 storey, 3889 room tower comprising hotel rooms, condo units, casino, and entertainment venues. It’ll also come with a 60,000 square foot spa, 3,200 seat theatre, shopping space and what’s being billed as the world’s largest rooftop pool and club scene.

This last feature should make for an interesting night out – just imagine the view over Vegas from 63 storeys up, with a huge pool next to you!

Until recently, there was some doubt as to whether the project would ever get off the ground. Fortunately, Fontainebleau Resorts have announced that they’ve just secured a $4 billion deal that will secure the project’s development, so the picture you see above will become reality in just over two year’s time.

[Source: Las Vegas Review Journal, Bruce Hiatt, via SkyScraperPage]

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.

The Fontainebleau’s three new neighbours are all huge projects in their own right, each costing from $2 – $5 billion.

Obviously if The Fontainebleau is to compete, it too must be huge and expensive – and it doesn’t disappoint! Costing $2.8 billion, it sits in the middle of your average Vegas construction project, and for that money, you get quite a lot of casino.

So exactly what do you get for $2.8 billion in Las Vegas these days? How about the following:

• A 3,889-room hotel including 2,719 standard rooms, 152 suites and 1,018 luxury condominium-hotel units;
• A 100,000 square foot casino featuring approximately 1,700 slot machines and 125 table games
• 30,000 square feet of Class A convention and meeting space;
• Approximately 300,000 square feet of high-end retail outlets;
• 50,000 square foot spa;
• Exclusive amenities including seven signature restaurants by world-renowned chefs, a
• 3,200-seat state-of-the-art theatre featuring dramatic live entertainment and shows; and
• A large rooftop pool positioned on a 12.1-acre podium above the casino.

All of this in a giant 63 storey glass tower.

Yet more shopping

One thing that immediately strikes me about this is the 300,000 square feet of retail space. This is on top of the 1,750,000 square feet of shopping space that’s already under construction (and that doesn’t include the existing shops at the Fashion Show shopping mall, or the shops at the Venetian, Caesar’s Palace and Planet Hollywood!)

Seriously, how much shopping does one town need?

Speculation has already begun as to whether Vegas can support this huge number of new hotel rooms and shops that are being built (the casinos are never questioned – you can never build too many of them!).

In an effort to shield themselves from potential over-supply, many of the new projects that are being built, including the Fontainebleau, are both hotels and condos, with people able to buy a condo and rent it out as a hotel room, with all the servicing taken care of by the hotel. As such, the new hotels should be reasonably protected from any downturn, however unlikely that might be.

Splitting the Vegas Strip in two

One side effect of the development of the north is that the strip is effectively being split in two. On the south, you have the themed hotels of the Luxor, New York New York, the MGM, Excalibur and Mandalay Bay, all within walking distance of one another. On the north, you’ll have the Palazzo, Echelon Place, Wynn and Wynn Encore, and now the Fontainebleau, again all within walking distance.

However, travelling the length of the strip in baking hot desert heat is not fun, and so it’s likely that people will gravitate towards one end or the other, and stay there.

It’ll be interesting to see how the north’s development affects the number of visitors to the south, and whether those hotels in the middle (Caesar’s, the Venetian, Paris and the Bellagio) will experience a surge in traffic as people walk from the south to the north (and vice-versa), or whether people will stay at one end of the strip and bypass the middle altogether.

[Source: PBL, VegasTodayAndTomorrow, LasVegasHighRiseBlog]