July 8 is the date set for breaking the ground on Dream Las Vegas casino resort near the airport on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip. While hardly a boutique with over 500 rooms planned, the development is expected to fulfill the needs of vacationers looking for an experience that doesn’t have a huge casino floor, thousands of rooms, multiple nightlife venues, and the feel of a mega-resort.
What visitors will find is an upscale casino and hotel with a build price of a little over half a billion dollars, 531 rooms and suites, a range of restaurants, nightlife, meeting and event space, and a single upper-story pool deck off the third floor.
Opening Late 2024
The site is expected to open in late 2024 next to Harry Reid International Airport off Russel Road and south of Mandalay Bay and Luxor Las Vegas. Current occupants on either side of the approximately 5-acre site are a Harley-Davidson dealership and the Pinball Hall of Fame arcade.
The development will be under Shopoff Realty Investments and Contour, firms from Southern California, and will be the flagship casino for Dream Hotels which already has properties in its native New York (Manhattan), Florida, Hollywood, Nashville, and Bangkok, Thailand.
According to a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the firms announced the Dream project in February 2020 and planned to start construction in 2021- and then the world health emergency hit and visitor numbers plummeted.
Now, visitor numbers are up and the gambling take in Nevada has surpassed $1 billion a month for 15 months in a row.
Shopoff’s Bill Smith, senior VP of design and construction said: “We’re so excited about opening in ’24.”
Security Concerns Partly Responsible for Delay
According to the local article, the project’s proximity to the airport property had also raised some security concerns that were addressed by federal safety and security agencies including the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI.
Major airlines also noted security concerns due to certain architectural elements that could be used to blind pilots with lasers or even accommodate long gun attacks. Lighting and billboards were also an area of concern as they might cause “flash blindness” in pilots, creating a safety hazard.
According to the Review-Journal, counsel for the project provided the Clark County Commission with design change suggestions at an October meeting and several modifications were made to the buildings, and additional security walls were penciled into the safer design.
Additional high-security measures were introduced and commissioners approved the new plans on a 6-1 vote last fall.
Source: New Las Vegas hotel-casino ready to break ground next to airport, Las Vegas Review-Journal, July 1, 2022
