Fontainebleau Las Vegas’s 6,145-Day Journey Into Opening Night

Fontainebleau Las Vegas first off stony-broke earth inward February 2007. That’s so long ago, the Frontier was ease operating crosswise the street. Its owners, led past Jeffrey Soffer, planned to open it as a sis belongings to their Miami holiday resort inwards Oct 2009.

Instead, for 16 years, what was planned as the tallest occupied edifice inward Battle Born State remained unoccupied. The projection changed ownership and names, went bankrupt, started and stopped up(p) mental synthesis and and so started and stopped-up(a) again, before resuming for the final stretch.

At midnight on Thursday, the Fontainebleau testament open up to the public as the Strip’s newest casino resort. This is the wild story of how it got there.

Nearly Bleau It

Construction began inwards 2007 on the secret plan first off tenanted past the Thunderbird hotel and casino inward 1948. (Later, it was renamed the Silverbird, and then the El Rancho, before closure inwards 1992.)

After 1929, however, 2007 was the whip twelvemonth to pop a construction throw inwards American history. When the U.S. existent land bubble fit a year later, it propelled the humanity into the Great Recession.

There were badness omens, if you trust inward that tolerant of stuff. In August 2007, a twist worker died after a 30-foot fall. a few years later, a concrete slab in the garage fell, causing two get down floors to collapse.

Nevertheless, the hotel’s 68-story tower was topped turned on Nov. 14, 2008.

And that’s when the project’s hazard really ran out. The Fontainebleau’s lenders, Bank of America and JP Thomas Hunt Morgan Chase, got so spooked past the economic outlook, they canceled their $770 trillion inwards funding inwards 2009.

The $2.8B externalise went bankrupt.

Unfinished Business

On the roof, the cranes stopped-up(a) moving. Eventually, they were removed entirely. The luxurious furnishings purchased to adorn its 3,644 rooms were sold to The Plaza downtown and Buffalo Bill’s inward Primm.

For to the highest degree of 2009 through 2017, the anatomical structure stood only 70% complete, an unwanted and humiliating monument to economical ruin.

But billionaire investor Carl Icahn saw only if economical opportunity. He bought the edifice inwards a 2010 bankruptcy auction for $150M and did not get along a bingle thing to it for heptad years. In 2017, he sold it to belongings developer Steven Witkoff and an investment fast(a) called New Valley for $600M, Little Joe times what he paid.

And that’s wherefore he’s Carl Icahn.

Bookended past Disasters

Witkoff began redeveloping the unfinished gambling casino resort, which he renamed The Drew Las Vegas inward reward of his son Saint Andrew the Apostle Witkoff, who died of a dose o.d. inward 2011.

In Feb 2018, Marriott International signed on to manage and control the hotel portion. Early 2022 was localize as the project’s s unexampled opening date.

In March 2018, an trespasser readiness the first of all of ii fires that would plague the expression site, causing $10 jillion inwards damage. (The second, a nonaged blaze, occurred this July.)

The chess opening was pushed indorse to the 2d quarter of 2022.

But mental synthesis was halted inward Mar 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced the shutdown of businesses inwards Las Vegas. At the time, Witkoff was secretive to finalizing a $2 1000000000 twist loan, but it never came through.

History was starting to echo itself. And then, it really repeated itself.

Full Circle

In a stunning move around of events, the cast was reacquired by Soffer in 2021 for $650M through and through his company, Fontainebleau Development, inward partnership with Koch Real Estate Investments. They in agreement(p) to take on Witkoff’s debt to avoid foreclosure, and the throw re-hewed to its archetype plans.

Marriott mysteriously pulled out of its deal, but the Fontainebleau projection forged forrader without the hotel giant’s relatively paltry $50M investment.

The Fontainebleau’s total price label was now $3.7B, making it the secondly most expensive resort of all time developed inwards Las Vegas after the $4.3B Resorts World.

“Welcome to the Fontainebleau Las Vegas era,” Soffer said at an invite-only ribbon-cutting on Wednesday. “Today, we clear our doors to the world, and welcome our number 1 guests to receive the pinnacle of luxury hospitality.”

So what took you so long?

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