Last Wednesday, Boyd Gaming went before the Clark County Commission (which approved a use permit) with plans for its Echelon Place development. In short, Boyd is talking about nearly 10 million square feet of development, encompassing 4,280 hotel rooms and 1,000 condos. The hotel and condo towers would be 650 feet (Resort Tower), 466 feet (Shangri-La Tower) and 534 feet high (Suite Tower), respectively.
They'd be fairly close to Las Vegas Boulevard, too: Boyd is asking for a 104-foot setback where 210 feet is the norm. The company's submitted plans don't involve the "Yarrow" or Westward Ho sites, acquired at the 11th hour, so it remains to be seen what Boyd does with its newly expanded Strip frontage. (Of course, Boyd has to devise a way to get rid of that pesky McDonald's first.) In the meantime, the land will host a concrete-batch plant and construction-related offices.
The "Yarrow" acreage, which connects the Strip to Industrial Road, will perhaps be subsumed into Boyd's proposed "North Road," which will service the Shangri-La and Suite towers. The motel sitting on the Stardust's southwest corner will become the site of the Echelon physical plant, while the southeast corner will be home to almost a half-million square feet of retail. In addition to a million-plus square feet of convention space, another 300,000 will be devoted to the Anschutz Entertainment Group's showrooms.
As mentioned in a previous Stiffs & Georges entry, Morgans Hotel Group is committed for a pair of 590-foot hotel towers, using its Delano and Mondrian brands. These will be a mix of 750 hotel rooms and 1,000 resort condos. Morgans apparently hasn't gotten around to finalizing its designs … or, if it has, it's forgotten to mail them to Clark County, perhaps while it continues to scrounge up financing for a heavily leveraged purchase of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. (I sure hope Boyd is on the lookout for equity partners who can build those two hotels if Morgans bails out. The latter really doesn't seem to have its eye on the Echelon ball.)
While Boyd can have as much as 26,000 square feet of water features, it is using less than a fifth of that, scattered across a half-dozen fountains, located at key points of entry. On a sadder note, Stardust Road will go the way of all flesh, becoming Echelon Resort Drive. What price nostalgia? I guess "$4 billion" is the answer.
Clark County's planning staff did raise qualms about Echelon's main entrance, on the Strip, saying its design "creates major conflicts in pedestrian and vehicular traffic. A redesign is recommended", one that could include a pedestrian bridge. Heaven knows, if there's one thing the Strip doesn't need it's more traffic snarls. More details on the project as soon as they are vouchsafed us by Boyd.
