The Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino

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For other uses, see: Cosmopolitan (disambiguation).
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The Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino is a resort casino and condo that broke ground in October 2005 just south of the Bellagio on the west side of the Las Vegas Strip. When it opens in mid 2009, the $2 billion project will feature 2,200 condominium-hotel units; 800 hotel rooms; a 75,000 sq ft (7,000 m²) casino; 300,000 sq ft (30,000 m²) of retail and restaurant space; a 40,000 sq ft (4,000 m²) spa and fitness facility; an 1,800 seat theater; and 150,000 sq ft (14,000 m²) of meeting/convention space.

The themed glass wall of the podium and the curtain wall, designed by Arquitectonica and Jean-Pierre Kocher, is manufactured by a Hong Kong Based firm, Far East Aluminum Works. The hotel and casino will be managed by Global Hyatt Corporation, with the hotel opening as the Grand Hyatt Las Vegas.

The Cosmopolitan Resort, along with the Palazzo hotel, are the first of Las Vegas's new generation of full service ultra-compact resorts. Both of these resorts, due to limited land, will feature an underground parking garage over which the hotel itself will be built.

Contents

[edit] Jockey Club

The resort is being built on what used to be a small parking lot for a nearby midrise timeshare building called the Jockey Club, which has existed for several decades. As The Cosmopolitan will use up all of the parking area for Club residents, part of the agreement was that they will be allowed to use a portion of the Cosmopolitan's underground parking garage. The Cosmopolitan will therefore nearly completely enclose the southern portion of the Club. The Cosmopolitan developers will "decorate" the otherwise bland northern wall a bit with some type of graphic design in order to appease the residents in those south facing areas.

[edit] Construction

The project was begun by developer 3700 Associates, LLC, headed by Ian Bruce Eichner. The resort's underground parking needed to be completed first before any above ground structures could proceed due to the resort's ultra-compact design which allows it to make the most efficient use of its limited land. Although the Cosmopolitan sits directly north of the City Center Project, also under construction, it is an independent project and is not connected in any way to the $7 billion development. As of December 2007, work has just finished on the 70-foot (21 m) hole for the parking structure and foundation work is in progress.

In January 2008 it was reported that the $3 Billion project faced foreclosure, as Eichner's company defaulted on a $760 million construction loan from Deutsche Bank when the developer missed a payment after failing to secure refinancing for the project. Construction still moved forward as the developers searched for new financing to bail out the project. In late February 2008, Global Hyatt Corporation and New York-based Marathon Asset Management agreed to recapitalize the condominium-hotel project.[1] In March, 2008, the developer said Deutsche Bank AG would begin foreclosure proceedings[2].

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Arnold M. Knightly, DEVELOPMENT: Project saved by pair's aid, Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 28, 2008.
  2. ^ Foreclosure on Las Vegas Casino to Begin

[edit] References

  • 'Cosmo says hello:Guests see model of condo-hotel', Howard Stutz, Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 26, 2005.

[edit] External links

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