Bigger is, of course, better, and taller better still, and so Donald Trump has decided he can't possibly be outdone in such matters, and therefore his Trump International, two towers of hotel rooms and condos, will be 60-something stories when they open in late 2007 and 2008. The town giggles delightedly over all this display of architectural macho.
Less obvious to the naked eye, Mandalay Resorts agreed to a $4.8-billion takeover by MGM Mirage in 2005. The MGM MIRAGE-Mandalay Group now owns more than half the hotel rooms on the Strip. That's great news for shareholders but lousy news for visitors, who will find even fewer bargains on Strip rooms as competition dries up -- especially now that Harrah's and Caesars have also joined forces, leaving pretty much all the hotels on the Strip in about two sets of corporate hands. The new giant started off with a bang, with the destruction of the old Boardwalk Hotel, to be replaced by 2010 with the most ambitious project yet in a town full of 'em: Project CityCenter. Get this: It will contain, if it all comes to fruition, not just a 4,000-room megaresort and casino and all that goes with it (shops, restaurants, clubs), but also two 400-room boutique hotels (one being a part of the ultraluxe Mandarin Oriental chain), plus a couple thousand condo units and even more shopping, clubs, and restaurants separate from those belonging to the hotel complex.
Rivaling that project for its sheer size and scope will be Echelon Place, the $4-billion-plus development that is replacing the Stardust on the north end of the Strip. When it opens in 2010, it will have more than 5,300 rooms in four distinct properties -- Echelon Resort (a mega-casino style place) and three boutique hotels with high-cache names: Mondrian, Delano, and Shangri-La (a high-end Asian hotelier) -- plus the typical casino, meeting, shopping, restaurant, entertainment, and other facilities one would expect in a place that costs this much money.
www.frommers.com
Other big projects on the decks include the nearly $2-billion Cosmopolitan, which will include a Hyatt-branded and -run hotel and a big casino next to Bellagio when it is complete in late 2008; the W Hotel and Residences going up just east of the Strip on Harmon Avenue; and Las Ramblas, a $3-billion hotel, casino, and residential project with no less than George Clooney as one of the primary backers.
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