New Echelon Place gallery added

Echelon Place’s Delano Tower to float 400 feet in the air

The somewhat bland renderings of the new Echelon Place that were released a few days ago caused something of an upset on the main Vegas forums. The renderings seemed to show a pretty soulless set of buildings that would look anonymous in any city, let alone a city like Las Vegas.

However, an anonymous building on the strip would mean almost certain death for any project, and certainly one costing over $4 billion. Fortunately, a new set of renderings have emerged that ad far more detail to Echelon Place’s current design, and as you can see, this set looks far more spectacular than the last one.

More pics of Echelon Place after the jump.

MGM Mirage and Kirzner to build Atlantis mega-resort next to Circus Circus?

MGM Mirage purchased over 30 acres of land next to its Circus Circus hotel on the north end of the Vegas strip back in April. This gave the company over 100 acres of contiguous land in a rapidly developing area of the strip. Rumours were rife that MGM Mirage could be planning to build another resort on the scale of the $7.7 billion Project CityCenter.

However, it was precisely because they were investing so heavily in CityCenter that it was thought that the company wouldn’t begin work on the land until sometime close to CityCenter’s compeltion – in other words, sometime in 2009.

This being Vegas, though, things tend to happen rather quickly, and MGM Mirage have now announced a deal with Kerzner International Holdings that will see the development of a multi-billion dollar “integrated resort property” on this area of land, which should being construction a lot sooner than 2009.

Kerzner are the people behind the fabulous-looking Atlantis, Pardise Island hotel in the Bahamas, and so with this latest news, rumours are abound that new Las Vegas resort could be a Las Vegas Atlantis right next to Circus Circus – just without the sea and the ships!

Full details of MGM Mirage and Kerzner’s announcement after the jump.

New pictures of Echelon Place

Boyd Gaming gave us all an update on its progress with Echelon Place yesterday, announcing that thye’d broken ground and construction was about to begin in earnest. Tantalisingly, they also announced that new renderings of the $4 billion mega-resort would be made available, but hadn’t actually released them to the public – until today.

Here, then, are those renderings. The first picture (above), shows an aerial rendering of the entire complex, and mighty impressive it looks, too. However, the second rendering (below, after the jump), is marginally less exciting. In fact, it’s quite dull looking!

How to erase a 2,400 room hotel in 3 months

Boyd Gaming has announced that they’ve broken ground on the construction of the new Echelon Place. What this means is that the last of the detritus of the old Stardust Hotel has now been cleared away, and work can begin in earnest on building the mammoth new Echelon Place Hotel Resort.

The old Stardust hotel, the remains of which Echelon Place is being built on top of, was a 2,400 room icon of the strip that had been around for nearly 49 years.

It took just 3 months to erase it from the face of the Earth.

Kind of sad, really – until you remember that the Stardust was mostly famous for Wayne Newton and what can only be described as an out-dated heap of a hotel that was looking older by the day!

In its place will come Echelon Place, which will feature five distinct hotels and condos, each with their own theme, together with 300,000 square fee of retail space, 750,000 square feet of convention space, and entertainment galore.

Incidentally, Wayne Newton signed a 10-year deal with The Stardust worth $25 million a year. Think of how much better the place could have looked if they’d spent the cash on the building rather than the entertainer!

Boyd Gaming included more details of what’s coming with Echelon Place, which you can read about after the jump. Apparently, there are more renderings of how Echelon Place will look, too, but they haven’t been released yet. Needless to say I’ll publish them just as soon as they are.

Diablo’s Cantina at Monte Carlo – construction on a tiny scale

Amid the hype of the multi-billion mega-casinos that are being thrown up with indecent haste around the strip, one small project is slowly taking shape that’s been lost amongst all the fanfare.

Called Diablos’ Cantina, it’s a new multi-level entertainment complex that’s being built at the front of the Monte Carlo casino, which will soon be just next to the giant Project CityCenter complex. Diablos will offer a full service restaurant and a bar and club on the second floor.

More details and a picture of how Diablo’s will look when it’s finished after the jump.

80 billion dollars of new Vegas hotels

I’ve reported before that there’s currently $30 billion’s worth of construction going on around the Las Vegas strip, with high profile hotels such as Project CityCenter, Echelon Place, Fontainebleau, Encore at Wynn and the Palazzo all under various stages of construction.

But $30 billion is not enough for Las Vegas – if you’re going to gamble, you might as well do it large, and if the whole city’s going to gamble with its future, large means really large!

Aaron Auxier has compiled a list of projects that are about to begin or are in the planning stage, and has calculated that the list of new projects comes to another $30 billion! Read on to see what else is coming Vegas’s way.

Las Vegas WET water park keeps the south Strip fun

Las Vegas WET is a new water-based theme park that is somewhat bucking the trend of the latest round of Las Vegas construction projects. Whereas everyone else is currently focusing on the north end of the strip, building their fancy luxurious multi-billion dollar hotels around Circus Circus, Las Vegas WET is focusing on the south side of the strip.

It’s also decided to eschew the latest trend of building luxurious hotels (some of which don’t even come with the ubiquitous casino), and gone back to what Vegas does best – themes. Las Vegas WET will be a huge 200 acre theme park with some incredible attractions that will make Disneyland look tiny by comparison.

More details on Las Vegas WET after the jump.

Las Palmas – another new multi-billion-dollar Vegas hotel

The Peebles Corporation have obviously looked at all the new mega-hotels that are currently being built at the north end of the Vegas strip, and thought to themselves “you know what this area could do with? Another multi-billion dollar mega-hotel!”

So that’s just what they’re going to do. They’ve bought 13 acres of land just easy of the Wynn on Paradise Road, and are going to build a $2.5 billion hotel and condo development that will be called Las Palmas Hotel and Residence.

Read more about the Las Palmas Hotel in Vegas after the jump.

Frontier to close July 15th

The Frontier, which has been on the expected-to-be-demolished list for some time now, has finally got a closing date: midnight July 15th. The Frontier was looking increasingly ropey, and the only “attraction” (if that’s the right word!) was Gilley’s, the red-neck club featuring topless bull-riding girls and bikini mud wrestling.

So in just a month’s time, gone will be the legendary sign boasting “cold beer, dirty girls”, and in its place will rise the swanky $5 billion 3,500 room Plaza hotel and casino. Quite a contrast! Another legendary Vegas icon will have been imploded and another mega-hotel will rise from its ashes.

It also seems that the Plaza development is being expanded, with a lot more retail space planned for the hotel, and maybe some more condo units.

[Source: Las Vegas Review Journal, SkyscraperPage]