Saturday, January 10, 2009

Week in Vegas - Other than CES!

With CES going on in Vegas this week, it has been all the buzz on 7,283 different blog. It's a geek's wet dream! Despite the biggest techfest of the year, there actually was some other news coming out of Vegas this week.


MGM Mirage announced that it was delaying the opening of "The Harmon" component of City Center until 2010 and pulling the condo option out of it. With this change and others they have done, they managed to shave $600 million off of the price tag for City Center. They will finish the exterior of the building but leave the inside unfinished. The cancellation of the condo part is keeping inline with the overall weak demand for Vegas high-rise condos. I don't know how they are going to sell the rest of them in Vdara and Veer and they were banking heavily on that cash to finance the whole project. We will see how the whole thing pans out when it opens in December 2009.


On the very next day after the MGM announcement, a very different story came out. One that used to be common in Vegas but now is a serious head stratcher. An Israeli group asked for a permit to build the world's largest hotel on a site next to the Hard Rock Hotel.. At one time it was to be Las Ramblas, a massive project that was proposed then cancelled which involved actor George Clooney. This is absolutely puzzling to me. Everyone who has not been dead for the past year knows this thing will never happen. Especially since the company that proposed it is currently dumping properties just to pay it's bills. My guess is, they feel the permits will raise the property value but considering the nose dive that resort corridor property has taken, I don't think it will help much.

On a website note, I still have a bunch of property maps to add from my last trip, hopfully they will be done this week.


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