Vegas Before Resorts World- The Cosmopolitan
Resorts World Las Vegas is going to be the first new hotel to open its doors in Las Vegas after almost a decade. The last new casino of Vegas, before the Resorts World, was The Cosmopolitan.
Ian Bruce Eichner, a developer from New York, had first broken ground for The Cosmopolitan in 2005 when the real estate industry in Las Vegas was riding a high. But within three years, the situation had deteriorated dramatically. The Las Vegas real estate industry was collapsing, and Cosmopolitan’s lender ended up foreclosing on a half-built casino.
But Eicher was undaunted. He managed to go ahead with the construction, and in 2010, the Cosmopolitan was finally inaugurated. But the economy was in a serious recession at the time, and Cosmopolitan did not gain enough business to sustain its multi-million dollar investment. It was soon closed and sold off at a huge loss.
On Thursday, June 24th, Resorts World Last Vegas finally took The Cosmopolitan’s title of the last new casino on the Strip. $4.3 billion has been invested into Resorts World, and on Thursday, the opening ceremony attracted a huge crowd. But Resorts World is opening its doors in a market that was struggling even before the pandemic and has recently started to recover from the devastating blow of pandemic restrictions.
Eichner, now a 76-year-old man, recently talked about the legacy of Cosmopolitan and the future of Resorts World. According to him, rather than the old adage which talks of the importance of location, he believes that timing is even more important for the success of any business.
In the months before the pandemic, Vegas was just on the cusp of recovering from the recession of 2010, and new constructions were beginning to restart. Some commercial establishments had been developed in Vegas over the last decade, but resorts have not had much success.
The land for Resorts World was purchased in 2013, and it was supposed to start operations in 2016, but this plan kept being pushed back for years. This is because investors generally apprehension about investing in Vegas because costs for projects started during the recession have now increased tremendously.
Many resorts have been planned in Vegas in the last few years, but these plans are never followed through.
But Eichner is still adamant about the fact that his grand plan for The Cosmopolitan would have succeeded had the recession not hit. Eichner had planned his project to be a unique development that would stand out as a huge high-rise among the large vertical plots of the other casinos on the Strip. The Cosmopolitan’s opening ceremony had also been very successful, but customers did not spend very much at the casino in the next few years due to the economic crisis. In 2014 the Cosmopiltan was finally sold off after three consecutive years of losses.
Eichner claims that he did not lose any money on Cosmopolitan. But Deutsche Bank, which funded a majority of the project, incurred massive losses.
Eichner says that he has no regrets about Cosmopolitan despite its failure to succeed. But Cosmopolitan can definitely be an example for Resorts World of the pitfalls it should avoid in order to succeed on the Strip.
