Dive Brief:
- Construction crews, led by contractor McCarthy Building Cos. and construction manager Tré Builders, have started concrete work on the Circa Resort & Casino in downtown Las Vegas, Casino News Daily reported. The price tag for the project is "in the neighborhood of $1 billion," reports Vital Vegas.
- The Circa resort will be a part of the Fremont Street Experience venue and will offer 777 rooms and suites; a two-level casino with slots and table games; a nine-story garage with 1200 parking spaces; a multilevel, stadium-style sportsbook; a multitier pool amphitheater and more.
- Circa is the first new ground-up resort to be built in downtown Vegas in more than 30 years, and is set to open in late 2020.
Dive Insight:
Circa joins the list of $1 billion-plus megaprojects underway in Sin City right now. In fact, local construction employment growth of 8.8% in the area last year was more than twice that of the rest of the nation (4%), the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Malaysia-based Genting Group is currently building out its $4 billion Resorts World Las Vegas property, which is expected to have a total of 7,000 hotel rooms, roughly 3,300 of which are set to come online with the completion of the first phase. The resort, which takes inspiration from Chinese scenes like the Forbidden City, will feature convention space, a movie theater and a lake.
Genting survived a legal blip earlier this year after Wynn resorts accused it of pirating its distinctive Resorts World Las Vegas casino design. Genting eventually agreed to alter its design.
The joint venture of McCarthy Building Cos. and Mortenson Construction is building the almost $2 billion future home of the Las Vegas Raiders. Stadium construction is on an aggressive 30-month schedule so that the team can start off the 2020 NFL season there. Last month, however, construction monitor Grand Canyon Development Partners told the Las Vegas Stadium Authority board of directors that there had been delays in the delivery of steel, although that wasn’t expected to affect the project delivery date, the Review-Journal reported.
Also last month, project officials told the board that steel fabricator Merrill Steel filed a mechanic’s lien against the project claiming that Mortenson-McCarthy had not paid its bill. Las Vegas Stadium Co. Chief Operating Officer Don Webb told the board members that Merrill had been paid for every invoice submitted.
