Abandoned - Fontainebleau Las Vegas

[Music] what's up guys my name is jake and welcome to abandoned episode 63. the sparkling city of las vegas has always been known for its often over-the-top resorts las vegas boulevard is densely packed with incredible structures all very much successful but i've always wondered what happens when a resort doesn't do all that well or perhaps never even got the chance to find out today i wanted to look at the ghost on the las vegas strip a towering structure seemingly so close to being finished but in reality has been sitting there abandoned for over a decade so join me as i seek out what happened to the never opened fountain blue las vegas hotel and casino this episode is brought to you by me and my brand new feature length documentary closed for storm the release is finally here coming to all major video on demand services july 6th you can also pre-order my movie right now on itunes it all began with turnberry associates a real estate development company owned by billionaire donald sofer his company purchased a 21 acre parcel of land at the corner of las vegas boulevard and elvis presley drive the existing structure on the property was the thunderbird resort which eventually closed in 1992 as the el rancho turnberry had high ambitions for this land and soon demolished the existing structure their plan was to build a massive 2000 room hotel and casino themed on the city of london with a towering lodge building made to look like big ben however this coincided with the events of september 11 2001 and tourism took a big hit the london resort was ultimately cancelled and turnberry moved on to other projects like purchasing the adjacent land to their existing las vegas property and building condos turnberry was also keeping busy with developing the residences at a luxury hotel in miami beach called the fountain blue it was a hotel built in the mid-1950s and carries a lot of historical weight to it even listed as a historical landmark and overall iconic hotel in south florida they saw fountain blue as a valuable name and potentially a valuable brand which could see multiple iterations across america so in 2005 a private corporation was set up to manage new developments to the brand co-owned by turnberry associates and managed by key industry executives this along with their previous land acquisitions all pointed to a west coast expansion and sure enough by may of that year the fountain blue las vegas hotel and casino was officially announced this project was even bigger than the original london-themed resort fountain blue las vegas was nothing short of colossal across 3.4 million square feet the resort would feature a casino a convention center a 3200 seat performing arts center a 300 000 square foot shopping district 27 restaurants and bars night clubs a 60 000 square foot spa a seven acre pool deck and 3 89 rooms made up of both hotel and condo units in addition the sprawling and high tech resort would also feature brand new apple imacs in each room replacing the traditional resort information booklets with 63 floors the fountain blue was set to become the tallest building on the strip and won with an enormous price tag the cost to get the doors open for this mega hotel was set at around 3 billion with construction financed ground was broken in early 2007. the funding mainly came from loans worth billions of dollars from multiple big banks all to see this resort through now with an anticipated opening date of fall 2009 as construction went vertical the global economy went the other way and i bet you're thinking to yourself right about now that taking on billions in bank loans developing a tour centered project especially one that big was a bad combination and you're absolutely right the 2008 recession has become a bit of a theme lately on my channel so you'll know that having construction projects that are heavily leveraged off of loans during this time was extremely risky but as the recession dried up trillions fountain blue claimed that they were still financially sturdy and the construction continued on behind the scenes however they were in significant debt despite this and staying true to their word construction did continue on and as bankers sobbed on wall street the 63-story tower topped off becoming the tallest building on the las vegas strip however while they seemed to be almost immune to the financial crisis their luck on this big gamble was about to turn by september of 2008 the collapse of the financial institution lehman brothers had put a gap in their retail portion of fountain blue's funding additionally moody's a credit rating agency had downgraded their loan citing they had declining faith in the project due to decreased demand for gambling as glass began to cover the tower by december a condo preview center opened with apparently a lack of much interest especially as other resorts in the area who were also selling condos were struggling during this time fountain blue resorts also embarked on a billion dollar renovation to their miami hotel and marketing campaign to raise brand awareness at this point the las vegas resorts still had the necessary funds to complete construction under the assumption that they would adequately sell enough condo units but with a loss of confidence from the larger banks they terminated an 800 million dollar revolving loan with fountain blue this prompted the resort to sue the group of lenders filing a 3 billion lawsuit they claimed that the banks failed to uphold their commitment even though they had received billions from the federal government's bailouts i can understand their point on that actually however it was later revealed by those banks that the developers had gone over budget and requested over a billion dollars in debt forgiveness so those banks decided that they were in violation of their loan agreements and pulled the plug on them by this point the resort was nearing 70 percent complete with an opening dates expected for october of 2009 whether or not they were actually going to meet that deadline was sort of contingent on this loan construction was then dramatically reduced once another lender to the project pulled their money out of fountain blue this resulted in a mass layoff to construction workers and progress was then very slowly made in addition to this the developers caught wind that one of those big banks who pulled their money deutsches bank had according to them a conflict of interest as they were heavily invested in another resort being built on the strip an amendment to their original lawsuit was filed now including this claim that deutsches was essentially sabotaging the fountain blue project these allegations were eventually dropped however so obviously things were going smoothly and it really only got worse from here this was because of a lawsuit filed this time against fountain blue from cccs international a construction consulting firm who had claimed a myriad of monetary negligence allegations on the part of these developers and essentially poor decision-making that led to them going over budgets and quotes fraudulent billing practices this lawsuit also revealed that the true cost to finish the complex would be around 3.5 billion dollars around 600 million dollars more than the original expectation it was also later revealed that internally the developers had multiple budgets one that they would call bank budgets and others that allegedly had the true cost as quote jeff's budget or quote real budget which in other words is fraud the las vegas son wrote a fantastic article about all the madness that was going on here and what that lawsuit alleged so i've left a link in the description below if you want to go read it with executives bailing and only around 250 construction workers left on payroll the almost dormant projects had reached its tipping point with no money left from loans fountain blue declared chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with over 2 billion in debt by the conclusion of that year the pressure was on to get the loans flowing back to fountain blue as turnberry ended up suing them which essentially was suing themselves it gets very complicated during this time but the main point was that they were trying to get extra loans which they failed to do because the economy was still in turmoil also they didn't exactly have the best track record thus far almost immediately after the bankruptcy the judge had ordered the property to be sold as soon as possible companies such as wynn and penn toured the property ultimately penn and a rather infamous businessman got into a bidding war and the latter eventually won paying 148 million dollars for the unfinished resort that businessman being carl icahn and if that name sounds familiar to you that's because that was the man who essentially ran twa into the ground he took possession in april of 2010 and stated that he would wait for the economy to recover before construction would resume to finish the hotel an estimated 1.5 billion dollars would still need to be invested to get the project across the finish line however icon's intentions weren't exactly clear as by the end of the year he sold off all of the interior fittings intended to go inside fountain blue this was later confirmed by time as over the next few years nothing was announced the massive unfinished building continued to sit abandoned right along the busy las vegas boulevard the barren landscapes to the north of the property revealed how far it had to go the rusting scaffolding still in place from construction was still visible from the sidewalks as was the towering steel beams of the lower levels of the structure the project was far enough along to where you could actually make out what the general spaces were going to be like yet ones that were never covered that was apart from the drywall and siding that were almost finished yet stuck in a limbo state so close to being done the tower itself too was in somewhat of a completed state with the enormous facade covered by glass only broken by a few panes that shattered or fell off it really does look like a decaying ghost structure on the opposite side of the tower a massive portion of the structure spanning the entire height was entirely exposed this was for the crane and service elevators that were still in place well into 2014. later in that year it was removed and adhering to the city's request to improve the sight lines of the abandoned fountain blue icon paid to have the facades covered with tarps and paint of course a minor fix to a much much larger issue around this time that lawsuit from 2009 was finally settled remember that 3 billion lawsuit fountain blue filed against the larger banks well a judge ultimately came back and sided with the banks anyways back in las vegas it appeared that the skepticism of carl icahn's true intentions to restore the property were well founded as in 2015 he put the property up for sale at 650 million dollars ultimately it was sold in august of 2017 by two private investment firms for 600 million dollars remember carl icahn bought it for around 150 million just seven years prior so yeah he probably made over 400 million dollars on this abandoned property now these new owners purchased the resort fully knowing that it would take another billion and a half to get it done their plan was to actually do something with the property and secured the loans from multiple big banks including oh look at that deutsches they took on new partners and began actively moving forward with developing plans in february a partnership with marriott was announced along with a new name for the resort the drew las vegas this reimagining would feature a jw marriott and an ultra luxury addition hotel on the top floors existing portions of the hotel were promised to be redesigned and a new opening date was set for 2020. this was later postponed to 2022 by the project leader and real estate investor stephen witkoff he claimed that more time was needed for designing and to be fair the concept art released for the new hotel shows a radical design change from the original 2007 rendering by january of 2020 witcoff announced that they were very close to securing a 2 billion loan needed for construction which soon after would get the momentum going finally it seemed as though this resort would have a bright future after all but just like the 2008 crisis i'm sure you're probably assuming what global catastrophe is coming next of course by march 2020 the pandemic had forced construction to stop and really just derailed the whole project you're going to have deja vu with this a few months later the developers were facing accusations from a construction firm claiming they performed work that was unpaid and by june they were the recipients of a lawsuit filed by former executives at the drew claiming they were not being paid for what their contracts called for after being laid off now this lasted through the rest of 2020 with very little work actually made on the drew but if this story wasn't tedious and weird enough in february of 2021 the property was once again sold this time to jeffrey sofer the son of donald sofer who started this whole thing it's part of his new company now named fountain blue development and this purchase was a joint venture between that company and coke industries that's right fountain blue is back while the purchase price was not disclosed it could be assumed that they bought it at market value which was around the same price that the last owners bought it for but still the project needs well over a billion dollars to get it finished it seems that's why they partnered with coke america's largest private company and despite whatever you may think of them they certainly have deep pockets now at the time of making this video it really isn't clear on what fountain blue developments plans to do with the drew they haven't announced an opening date or even if they plan on changing the name back to fountain blue the only thing we do know is that marriott will stay on as their hotel partner however since this is an entirely new company coming in they likely need to completely redesign the interiors again which of course takes time i think in the end this start has the most promising future considering they're essentially backed by a goliath and private money there is certainly a lot of pressure from the city and state to get this project finished but really the public reaction has been mixed at best some might even say that the building as it stands now looks sort of dated and that's probably because it's a design from the early 2000s will this monster resort even make enough money to become economically viable i think that's one of the many issues fountain blue developments are going to have to overcome and who knows how long that will take while that happens the tower will continue to sit abandoned unfinished and decaying on the north end of the strip certainly not helping the north end's reputation this project began with so much hype and ambition to create the tallest and one of the largest resort complexes in the entire country billions of dollars being funneled into what was supposed to be the next big hotel brand but poor financial dealings and bad timing killed their momentum and ultimately put everything to waste well for now in the end fountain blue las vegas has kind of come full circle but with little confidence from the public that anything will really happen as it stands now it's quite possibly the largest physical reminder of the 2008 recession so it's been almost two and a half years since i began working on my first feature documentary if you don't already know i wanted to make a film chronicling the rise and fall of the now infamous theme park six flags new orleans it turned out to be way more tedious than i had ever prepared for but we also got to tell such an interesting story and discuss issues i had never even considered in the end i think myself and the incredible team who worked tirelessly on the project created something really special i'm incredibly excited to finally say that closed for storm will be released on july 6 across all major video on demand services this includes itunes google play amazon youtube movies and many many more pretty much every major platform you can think of you can also pre-order the film right now on itunes and if you do so it will actually help the film out when it launches on that platform i also just want to say thank you so much for those of you who have been patiently waiting for this documentary to come out i know its release has been way slower than i thought but we've finally reached the finish line so thank you so much for sticking with me on it please go watch closed for storm when it comes out on july 6th my name is jake enjoy the movie and thank you very much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 2,038,883

Keywords: the drew las Vegas, las vegas, hotel, never built, abandoned, what happened, documentary, closed for storm, pre-order, Jake williams, new, HD, clean, Fontainebleau, bankrupt, 2008

Id: brmPG46uPl4

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ThatGuyNearby]

Its being worked on

[u/rtaisoaa]

Didn't this recently sell back to the original fontainebleau Corp or builder?

[u/twbluenaxela]

I was in the same class as the daughter of the architect who helped designed this place as well as another one in another part of the world. Can't believe it's abandoned now.

[u/princessindistress69]

I remember the 1st time I went to Vegas in 2009? Walking past there and commenting that I found it odd that there was all this construction equipment on this job site and a banner saying "opening soon/ now hiring" and there was not a soul working on it at 1 pm on a Monday. I've been sort of obsessively following this Saga ever since

[u/ayquelinda1969]

Thanks this was awesome ! I'm thinking of taking a drive there now to check it out . Live close . What about documentaries on Redlands CA ( spooky)