In the spring of 1999, more than a year after “Titanic” debuted on the big screen, colorful casino personality Bob Stupac came up with a big idea for Las Vegas.
His vision: the construction of a Titanic replica resort with 1,200 “cabins” and “iceberg” retail zones.
The plan sank like a real Titanic. But it would not have been the first proposed themed hotel structure along Las Vegas Boulevard, and certainly not the last. The latest such proposal was unveiled this week.
On Monday, Hard Rock International announced it was acquiring The Mirage’s operations division from MGM Resorts International for more than $1 billion in cash. It said the deal planned to build a guitar-shaped hotel tower on The Strip.
The purple-colored tower features six rays fired into the sky, like a string around the neck of a guitar, and the former Mirage has been rebranded and renovated with hard rock next to it.
Theme resorts are nothing new in Las Vegas. However, only if there are hotel buildings built wholesale to the theme, such as a pyramid-shaped Luxor or a skyline-designed New York-New York.
Details later 파친코
As for other hotel towers, Hard Rock has not announced any specific plans.
“We wish we could share more, but at this stage we are not ready to discuss the details of the design, development and timeline of the Las Vegas construction project,” Hard Rock spokeswoman Gina Morales said.
Scheduled for the second half of 2022, the company’s “priority is to respect the process of approving and closing game regulations,” she added.
Some resorts incorporate themes in other visible ways along the strips, such as the replica Eiffel Tower in Paris Las Vegas and the volcano in mirage, which is likely to be demolished to make room for other towers after Hard Rock takes over the Polynesian-themed property.
Nevertheless, the real estate market in Las Vegas boasts a long history of developers presenting big plans and never following them.
Theme ideas that won’t leave the drawing board reportedly include a project designed to look like an American company from “Star Trek,” a London-themed casino resort with Big Ben, a San Francisco-themed project with a replica Golden Gate Bridge, and a Harley-Davidson-themed project with an exhaust pipe-style hotel tower.
Hard Rock’s first other hotel tower
Hard Rock International, owned by Florida’s Seminole Tribe, said it operates restaurants, casinos, hotels and other venues around the world and owns the world’s largest and most valuable collection of authentic music memorabilia with more than 86,000 works.
Outside the Hard Rock store, there are known to be giant decorative guitars, and there is even a 450ft tall guitar-shaped hotel tower in Florida that looks like it was planned for Las Vegas.
When other hotels opened in the fall of 2019 as part of a $1.5 billion expansion at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino Resort, the company said six high-powered light beams in the new building project at least 20,000 feet above, mimicking imaginary guitar neck straps.
In Las Vegas, some locals may wonder if a guitar-shaped hotel will be built given the seemingly endless parade of big real estate plans to and from southern Nevada.
But Hard Rock has made one before, which is more than some developers can say.
