Wynn’s Plan to Build Third Vegas Strip Tower Still Alive

Posted on: June 20, 2024, 09:22h. 

Last updated on: June 20, 2024, 09:46h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas.

Wynn Resorts’ deadline to start construction on a third tower across the Strip from Wynn Las Vegas and Encore has been extended until April 2026.

Wynn and Encore Las Vegas are seen from the empty lot that still may become a third Wynn tower, though not anytime soon. (Image: bestoflasvegas.com)

The Clark County Zoning Commission voted Tuesday to extend previously approved development plans for Wynn to build an 1,100-room resort with a 28,000 square-foot casino space on the 34.6-acre site where the New Frontier Hotel and Casino once stood.

A representative of Wynn Resorts explained to the commission that the pandemic shutdown delayed all of its projects, that Wynn paid for a building height study in 2022 in which the Federal Aviation Administration found that a 640-foot tower could safely be built on the lot, and that the corporation is “committed” to developing the land after first focusing on some other development projects.

Those projects include the Wynn Al Marjan Island integrated resort in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

According to documents uncovered by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Clark County staffers initially recommended denying the extension because no new building permits or studies were submitted for review, and because some construction regulations have changed since construction was initially approved.

An undated rendering of the unrealized Alon Las Vegas casino resort. (Image: Alon Las Vegas)

Crowning Nonachievement

The initial construction green light for the plot was given in 2015 to Australia-based gaming and entertainment group Crown Resorts, which paid $240M for the lot in 2014 before announcing plans to build a $6B resort called Alon Las Vegas. Crown scrapped those ambitious plans in 2016.

Wynn Resorts bought the land and three adjacent acres for $336M in 2018. It then announced plans to build an 1,100-room casino resort called Wynn West, since it would sit on the west side of the Strip, across from the company’s other two towers. Wynn West would connect to them via an air-conditioned bridge spanning Las Vegas Boulevard.

Westward Hold

During his Q4 2017 conference call, then-company chair Steve Wynn told analysts “I don’t think the design and development period is going to be very long” for Wynn West.

Though the pandemic shutdown may explain construction delays since 2020, the reason no development timeline was announced before then was probably because, only a few weeks after Wynn West was announced, Wynn Resorts shifted into panic mode.

That’s when the Wall Street Journal published allegations made by several women that the company’s namesake had sexually harassed or assaulted them at his hotels —  charges that Steve Wynn has always denied, but that forced him to resign from all his corporate positions, sending his company into a tailspin.

El-Ad Properties’ Plaza Hotel Las Vegas never materialized, either. (Image: El-Ad Group)

More Vegas Vacations

Alon Las Vegas wasn’t the first vacated proposal for the vacant lot. The reason New Frontier owner Phil Ruffin imploded his vintage Vegas casino resort in the first place was because he had sold the land underneath it in 2007 for $1.2B, a Las Vegas record.

The buyer was El-Ad Properties, owner of the Plaza Hotel in New York City, which planned to build a Plaza-branded casino resort for $5B.

The Great Recession put the kibosh on that project only a few months after the New Frontier’s implosion on Nov. 13, 2007.

Since acquiring the vacant lot, Wynn Resorts has leased it out for special events.