Abandoned - Echelon Las Vegas

[Music] what's up guys my name is jake and welcome to abandoned episode 68. a short time ago i took a deep dive into the story of the fountain blue las vegas while i was doing research for that video i noticed another massive plot of land with another ghostly unfinished structure upon it yes literally right across the street from the infamous fountain blue was another failed mega project despite active construction now underway and most of this resort now open much of it never quite lived up to the initial plans so join me today as we take another trip down the glitz and glamour of the las vegas strip and discover how one of the largest private hotel projects in the world echelon place was ultimately abandoned this episode of abandon has been brought to you by my patreon supporters if you want to contribute and help the show while also getting unique perks click the link in the description below it all began with the iconic stardust hotel alongside las vegas boulevard on the north end of the strip the hotel had certainly enjoyed a colorful past with several ties to organize crime and even the mafia it wasn't until the 1980s though that boyd gaming took over the property and really corrected many of these rampant issues by the early 2000s boyd gaming began purchasing land surrounding the stardust seemingly with the intentions to either use it for the stardust or for something much bigger with their now 63 acres of land and the start of struggling in 2006 an announcement was made that void gaming would demolish the existing casino and build a massive 5 300 room mega resort called echelon place along with the insane amount of hotel rooms the property would also feature a million square foot convention center 350 000 square feet of retail 140 000 of casino space and over 25 bars and restaurants with a massive pool deck this was boyd's entry into the luxury and premium markets of las vegas and a segment stardust just wasn't really satisfying on the north end of the strip especially cheaper hotels like circa circus really populated that area but boyd had the idea to build something much more premium and luxury and bring that unique market to that side of the strip echelon however would be just one of several towers to make up this enormous complex as adjacent to the main hotel buildings would be their development partners this would include a shangri-la hotel which would have been the company's second hotel in north america at the time and their first in the united states across the property would be another two brands owned by morgan's hotel group a luxury boutique hotel company from new york city all together there would be four separate hotels a collection of all types of entertainment and many partners all coming together to build what was believed to be the second most expensive hospitality project in the world echelon place was set to cost over 4.8 billion dollars and set to open in 2010. after even more land was acquired in 2006 the now 87 acre property was set to completely transform the often poor reputation of the north end of the las vegas strip stardust was shuttered in late 2006 and in a rather spectacular display of fireworks the remaining tower was demolished in march of 2007. land clearing began almost immediately and the groundbreaking ceremony four echelon was held in june with fountain blue across the street already under construction another luxury hotel void gaming was also under the belief that there was immense demand for big luxury properties on the strip so much so that they thought echelon could hold its own even with their competitor right across the street opening at a similar time however not everyone believed in them as when the announcement was made back in 2006 their stock took a pretty big hit i guess investors weren't really sold on the somewhat big gamble despite this construction moved forward with pilings drilled in and foundations poured vertical construction took place around march 2008 on the main echelon towers and this continued through the rest of early 2008. just as the structures reached the ninth floor everything was halted yes our good friend the 2008 recession was knocking at development doors evaporating loans and increasing interest rates boyd's development partners over at morgan's hotel group suddenly had their loans cancelled and obviously struggled to find a new institution to help fund their projects this caused boyd to put the entire project on pause with the claim that once the global recession recovers they could just restart for the time being however the construction site would sit dormant through at least the end of 2009. as we all know by now building projects during this time was not only risky by itself but building a megastructure for a new market based upon the idea of people having money or willing to splurge wasn't great to make matters worse boyd's gaming stock had absolutely plummeted from around 53 dollars in 2007 to just over four dollars by december the following year executives then looked at the possibility of decreasing the overall scale of echelon regardless the las vegas sun quoted boyd's gaming chief executive claiming quotes we remain committed to having a meaningful presence on the las vegas strip at the time of the pause on construction investors actually saw this as a good thing as boyd gaming was essentially playing it safe the company had already committed 500 million dollars in cash towards the project with another 3.3 billion dollars in loans most of which i would imagine were going to skyrocket an interest if they did press forward with using them amid rumors of the other side of the site restarting soon boyd was still spending money on maintaining the structures that were still standing however as time went on nothing happened void gaming as a company was struggling their entire business was in casinos and hospitality a market that was really not doing very good during the recession but they had spent too much money on echelon already and were apparently very much committed still in getting it done just not anytime soon in late 2009 boyd announced they would be postponing the construction of echelon at least three to five years from that point the original opening date of 2010 was now looking more like late 2018 because this was such an important project to the city and an economic factor in the local area and something that will help the recovery an extension was granted to their zoning and permit expirations meanwhile executives at the company promised the city they would embark on a quiet beautification of the site allocating 4 million to cover the existing structures in a facade and revamp the landscaping around it this however never happened and the company continued to spend somewhere between 15 and 17 million dollars a year just to keep the property idle speaking of those structures there was quite a significant amount that was built for starters the west parking structure was around 85 percent complete with around seven out of the eight levels finished over at the main site another parking structure connected to the main structure had its foundation port with vertical construction flanking it about half a quarter of the massive convention center had already been put up with the primary casino in a similar situation within the casino you can actually see the early stages of construction to the grand two-story theater however these were merely just massive steel frames rising out of the desert perhaps the most recognizable structure though is the main hotel made up of the echelon suites regular rooms and the somewhat boutique in comparison shangri-la portion of the tower the rest of the site was being prepped for future construction and you can even see the concrete outline of where the mall was going to go the property sat like this until 2013 when a rather shocking announcement was made after months of negotiations boyd had ultimately sold the echelon site for 350 million dollars to a malaysian-based hospitality company named genting group is there a multi-billion dollar company which also owns star dream and crystal cruises they also have a huge market sharing casinos across the uk hong kong and of course malaysia they already have a presence in the united states primarily with their resorts world brand but had been looking to expand it in a big way they were already planning a multi-billion dollar resort project in miami and now with the available land and partially built structures right along the las vegas strip this would be their entry into the markets echelon however was dead as were the partner hotels planned to be built within now something much different yet also familiar was about to rise out of the abandoned site resorts world in a way was carrying on the ambitious plan initially set they announced a chinese-themed resort which would feature a great wall replica and a panda enclosure most importantly if fully built out it would have been one of the largest hotels in america encompassing a staggering 7 000 room starting of course with the original curved 66 story towers flanking them would be several additional hotel buildings that would come in at a later phase of the project in the middle would be all sorts of entertainment including an indoor water park genting stated they would be spending between three to seven billion dollars when they're all said and done which seems like a rather large margin initially the plan was to begin construction immediately and have the complex open by 2016. this was later pushed to changes in the resort's design but while this was being done yet again a groundbreaking ceremony was held now for resorts world las vegas and with it some minor construction work took place mainly with topping off the west parking structure otherwise work was quiet on the site as the permitting was being sorted out delays however continued to plague the property until finally in late 2017 the dormant sights had sprung to life once again the echelon's unfinished structures sat abandoned for more than nine years almost a decade of what was going to be one of the largest and most expensive hotel complexes ever sitting in failure and abandoned for millions to see finally though there was a welcome sight cranes now populated the immediate skyline rather quickly construction ramped up to over a thousand workers on the site and soon the primary tower once again began to rise this irritated wind down the road as they filed a trademark complaint against resorts world claiming the facade looked too much like theirs and they would be misleading customers based on the aesthetics of the towers believe it or not this became pretty contentious between the two resorts and ended with resorts world allowing wind to consult on their design meanwhile hilton hotels and resorts was named the primary hotel partner of the complex using three of their brands including a regular hilton lxr hotels and conrad finally on june 24th 2021 resorts world had officially opened to the public as a pretty dramatic shift from what was originally promised all the way back in 2013 certainly from 2006 as well across the design phase portions of the resort continued to be scaled down and theming replaced with rather generic structures gone was the enormous center court and meticulously themed entrance with distinctly chinese architecture now it was more or less big modern blocky shapes with led screens on them the interior suffered the same thing as they're essentially just regular modern spaces with slight touches of chinese influence this is certainly no venetian in terms of design and maybe people enjoy that perhaps the biggest change was the entire south end of the property being left pretty much empty in blueprints from 2020 the land looks to be slated for a small lake with pools at either end although in other concept art it looks like it's an outdoor amphitheater this means the albeit large structures that stand now could remain isolated and stand as the only big development on the land it's sort of a case where so much was promised and despite what was built being big you kind of got to ask yourself is that it i think it's obvious that the original layout of the initially proposed echelon tower was completed as it was meant to be one thing that is interesting however is the intended shangri-la section of the tower a portion that jetted out at the junction of both curves now in the original plan the shangri-la hotel would occupy this portion of the tower however in the initial resorts world concept art this portion would also remain with an unknown purpose though likely still to be a hotel but once everything was scaled back this portion was omitted from the final design the thing is though this section was already partially built so however far they got with it originally was just topped off there and that's just used for other things now i always find it interesting when something was built for a completely different reason than originally intended it's sort of one of the many quirks of reusing unfinished buildings one thing to also keep in mind is that shank roland never ended up building another hotel in america there's currently only two shangri-la hotels in north america right now and they're both in canada resorts world las vegas is now fully open with some light construction here there finishing off this arduous and costly endeavor overall the property received mixed reviews which got better with time as more sections opened up honestly i think my favorite part of this resort is the secret restaurant behind a seemingly regular shop i like that it's fun honestly though that's really all that stood out to me with 3 500 rooms the complex also features a 70 000 square foot retail center a 5 000 seat theater a bunch of technology spread across the gaming floors and quite a large pool deck with las vegas only infinity pool although it doesn't particularly have the best view while all of these numbers are impressively large it still doesn't really live up to what was originally promised perhaps that might even be a good thing though maybe and most likely a complex of that magnitude would just have too much of a hard time meeting expectations while also trying to remain profitable and filling rooms if the last decade has taught us anything it's that a property needs to be prepared to handle any economic situation that's thrown its way typically the larger the property the more difficult it is to weather the storm echelon failed rather spectacularly and in a very public way for many years it wasn't a good look at the north end of the strip that there were two mega hotels sitting unfinished and abandoned right across from each other however by the end after 15 years since it was first announced and over a decade since it was abandoned there is finally an active resort on the land one that's maybe a little uninspired and we'll see how it ends up doing but at least it's open and people are enjoying it i guess as a conclusion to that story resorts world really is completing the ambitious legacy of the echelons if you want to help support my videos like this and get a bunch of perks like your name at the end of my videos exclusive polaroids and merch then patreon is the perfect place to do so even if you want to shoot just a dollar my way a month you'll get a bunch of exclusive media including seeing my videos days before anyone else does also as a side note my first movie and feature documentary closed for storm a film about the rise and fall of the abandoned six flags new orleans is out now across north america and the united kingdom a worldwide release for everywhere else is coming january 2022. anyway guys my name is jake and thank you very much for watching [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 683,477

Keywords: resorts world las vegas, genting group, echelon Las Vegas resort, Fontainebleau Las Vegas, stardust resort, Boyd gaming, new, update, what happened, bright sun films, las vegas, new casino, 2022, 2021, documentary, history, recession, abandoned hotel, family friendly, clean, largest hotel, never finished, unbuilt, concept, resorts world casino abandoned, echelon, eshelon, esleon, history infamous, abandoned las vegas, review, hotel review, HD, cruise ship

Id: 1wKsoprTLdY

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021