A contractor has told the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority that demolishing the vacant Riviera Hotel & Casino and paving over that 26-acre site could cost up to $42 million.
Last February, the Authority purchased the Riviera for $182.5 million, plus $8.5 million in transaction costs. The Authority intends to use this space to expand the Las Vegas Convention Center out to the Las Vegas Strip, according to the Associated Press.
On August 11, the Authority’s board of directors unanimously approved a plan to demolish the Riviera and pave over the land rather than let the building sit vacant while the Authority finds the $2.3 billion needed to increase the size of the convention center to 5 million sf, from its current 3.1 million sf.
The contractor, Terry Miller of Cordell Corp., which is managing the Las Vegas Convention Center District project, told the board he expects the demolition would require an implosion as well as a teardown. However, the precise cost of that razing won’t be known until the Authority officially bids out the job.
The board had already rejected an alternative proposal that called for maintaining the vacant historic building—Las Vegas’s first high-rise resort when it opened on April 20, 1955—while demolition financing was sought. Miller estimated that option would have cost between $5 million and $10 million per year.
The 60-year-old Riviera, which closed on May 4, would be inventoried for hazardous materials before it is demolished.
Perhaps coincidentally, a week after the Authority’s board made its decision, Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, at the far end of the Strip, opened a 350,000-sf expansion of its convention center that now exceeds 2 million total sf, and over 900,000 sf of contiguous exhibit space.
Rossi Ralenkotter, the Authority’s president and CEO, said that expanding the Las Vegas Convention Center is among the efforts needed to avoid lose ground to other destinations interested in peeling away some of Vegas’ convention business. “The fact is, there’s a destination arms race all around us,” he told AP.
Through June, Las Vegas’s visitor volume was up 1.5% over the same period last year to 21,008,251, according to the Authority’s estimates. But gaming revenue was flat at $4.824 billion. Gaming revenue from casinos on the Strip was off 1.4% to $3.16 billion of that total.
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval recently convened a new tourism committee, whose goals include examining Southern Nevada convention facilities and making recommendations about new space.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
The softer side of Sears
Built in 1928 as a shining Art Deco beacon for the upper Midwest, the Sears building in Minneapolis—with its 16-story central tower, department store, catalog center, and warehouse—served customers throughout the Twin Cities area for more than 65 years. But as nearby neighborhoods deteriorated and the catalog operation was shut down, by 1994 the once-grand structure was reduced to ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Great Solutions: Healthcare
11. Operating Room-Integrated MRI will Help Neurosurgeons Get it Right the First Time A major limitation of traditional brain cancer surgery is the lack of scanning capability in the operating room. Neurosurgeons do their best to visually identify and remove the cancerous tissue, but only an MRI scan will confirm if the operation was a complete success or not.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gold Award: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel & Condominiums Detroit, Mich.
“From eyesore to icon.” That's how Reconstruction Awards judge K. Nam Shiu so concisely described the restoration effort that turned the decimated Book Cadillac Hotel into a modern hotel and condo development. The tallest hotel in the world when it opened in 1924, the 32-story Renaissance Revival structure was revered as a jewel in the then-bustling Motor City.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Palmer House Hilton Hotel & Shops Chicago, Ill.
Chicago's Palmer House Hilton holds the record for the longest continuously operated hotel in North America. It was originally built in 1871 by Potter Palmer, one of America's first millionaire developers. When it was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire it became the first hotel in the U.S. to put a telephone in every room.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gulf Coast Hotel's Stormy Road to Recovery
After his initial tour of the dilapidated 1850s-era Battle House Hotel, Ron Blount, construction manager with Retirement Systems of Alabama, said to his boss: “You need a priest more than you need a contractor.” Those words were more prescient to RSA's restoration of the historic Mobile landmark than he could have known at the time.
| Aug 11, 2010
Lifestyle Hotel Trends Around the World
When the Rocco Forte Collection opens the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort in Sicily in early 2009, the 200-room luxury property will be one of the world's newest lifestyle hotels. Lifestyle hotels cater to guests seeking a heightened travel experience, which they deliver by offering distinctive—some would say avant-garde, or even outrageous—architecture, room design, amenities, and en...
