Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas

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The Cosmopolitan Resort features an ultramodern design.

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 2008, the $1.8 billion project will feature 2,000 condominums; 1,000 hotel rooms; a 75,000 sq ft casino; 300,000 sq ft of retail, restaurant and entertainment space; and 150,000 sq ft of meeting/convention space.

The project is being developed by the Miami based developer Continuum Companies, headed by Bruce Eichner. The hotel and casino will be managed by Hyatt, with the hotel opening as the Grand Hyatt Las Vegas.

Continuum recently developed a condo tower called Continuum in Miami Beach and is currently planning a second tower called Continuum II.

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

Jockey Club

It is interesting to note that the resort is being built on what used to be a small parking lot for a nearby midrise timeshare building call 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 undergound parking garage. That said, the Cosmopolitan will nearly completely enclose the southern portion of the Club. This would no doubt upset residents in those south facing units, so the 2nd agreeemnt was to have Comsopolitan developers "decorate" the otherwise bland northern wall a bit with some type of graphic design.

It seems that all of this could have been easily avoided if the wealthy resort developers had decided to just buy out the Jockey Club outright. But being a timeshare property, they would have had to negotiate with the thousands of individual owners, proving to be a hassle. With no time to wait due to rising costs and land prices, it was decided to not buy the Club.

Construction

Construction is underway as of June 2006. The resort's underground parking will need to be completed first before any above ground structures can proceed due to the resort's ultracompact 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 is is not connected in anyway to the $7 billion development.

References

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

External links

• The Cosmopolitan web site
• LA Times article