Much of the revitalization playing out around the new casino is supported by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who moved the Internet retailer’s headquarters from the suburbs to the old City Hall building one block over from the Grand in September. Visitors can feed slot machines near leather armchairs, lavish chandeliers and lights that recall bare industrial bulbs.ĬIM is planning a retail center across the street from the hotel near the Mob Museum, itself a recent addition to the neighborhood. The Grand also picks up on the 1920s gangster bar aesthetic that has become trendy in Las Vegas. Signs on the gambling floor direct visitors to restaurants around the corner, and the casino itself lies on both sides of Third Street, with an overhead walkway connecting the building’s gambling floor and 634 hotel rooms.

The Grand incorporates elements of the two-block neighborhood the city has rebranded the Downtown3rd Entertainment District. To have a hotel come back revitalized, almost entirely rebuilt and to make such a mark here is simply incredible,” Carolyn Goodman said.īackers say the renovation cost more than $100 million, about what Strip casinos spend to build a single mega-clubĬIM Group, which advertises itself as “investing in urban communities,” gutted and remade the Lady Luck to conform with downtown’s new emphasis on walkability and community cohesion. The Las Vegas known as the Strip more resembles Dubai than the romantic American myth that we’ve held on to in our imaginations.Īs you walk through the glitzy but anodyne corporate landscape of huge glass-fronted hotel skyscrapers and designer shopping malls that beckon you away from the street and into acres of hotel lobbies filled with singing, blinking gambling machines, you soon come to the Stratosphere tower that marks the beginning of the old downtown Vegas.“The Lady Luck stood empty and sad for so long. The Strip was built by latter-day entrepreneurs, most of whom made their fortunes building property empires. But the old downtown “street of dreams” has for a long time struggled against its new big brash brother.

Here, working-class Americans come to gamble in a more accessible, relaxed atmosphere, where smoking is still allowedĭowntown Vegas was constructed by colourful chancers and legendary mobsters lured across the desert to try their luck at building fortunes, mainly through gambling, resulting in casinos like the Golden Nugget, Binions and the Four Queens. Downtown Las Vegas’s renowned casinos include Binion’s, Golden Nugget, El Cortez, Four Queens and Fremont.

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