Veer Towers Wind Tunnel

Sportswriter Bill Barnwell of Grantland has recently moved to Las Vegas to write about living on the Strip for a year.

He is renting an apartment in the Veer Towers at CityCenter and recently wrote about a strange phenomenon that occurs when the wind blows at Veer:

"I was lucky to get a place in the West property that faces away from the sister tower — according to residents who live in the section of the East tower that faces west, the building is subject to a loud, sustained whistling noise that occurs any time the desert wind whips past the building. This sound makes living in the apartment impossible and forces MGM, who still owns the building, to put any resident who complains in the adjacent Vdara Hotel & Spa for a free stay. The estimate I heard for how many times this has happened in 2011 was in the mid-20s."

This is a relatively small problem that will go unnoticed by most Las Vegas visitors, but it still makes me scratch my head about CityCenter. Almost every building at the complex has had issues:

Aria: Visitors have complained that it's too far away from the Strip, and the main show Viva Elvis is already getting a makeover.

Vdara: The only restaurant closed back in March, and they also have the Vdara Sun Ray.

Crystals: Has been relatively trouble free aside from vistors complaining that it's an underwhelming shopping mall. Eve nightclub closed but that's not really their fault.

Harmon Hotel: Never opened and probably is going to be imploded, pending County approval.

Veer Towers: Wind Tunnel.

Mandarin Oriental: Is the big winner, as I can't think of any glaring issues.

Plaza Hotel Downtown Soft Reopening

Hotel guests are beginning to check-in to the newly remodeled Plaza hotel downtown Las Vegas at the end of Fremont Street. The property is having a soft opening starting today before the official grand opening on September 1st.

The hotel closed in November to complete an estimated $20 million renovation project using furniture purchased from the stalled Fontainebleau development.

Prices for the updated rooms are $39-59 for weeknights and $99-129 for most weekend nights according to the Plaza website. Seems like a pretty good bargain for essentially a brand new hotel room.

I'm excited to see the reopening of the Plaza. When the plans were first announced I was skeptical whether the hotel would be able to complete the project. I thought it might be a situation like the Lady Luck, which closed down in 2006 and hasn't reopened.

New Tropicana Las Vegas Commercial

Tropicana recently posted this new commercial on YouTube. There's a lot of information for the average TV viewer to digest, but overall I think it's pretty good. If nothing else it gets the point across about the new rooms, and the whole "We're changing everything" campaign.

Revel Atlantic City Photos

The new Revel hotel resort in Atlantic City seems to be progressing nicely, on the way to its projected Spring 2012 opening date.

Revel has created a website to show off the project, with some new photos and video. The glass facade looks great with the way it reflects the clouds and sky.








For more: Revel Media Center.

O'Sheas to be replaced by Clothing Store

I was looking at this new rendering of Project Linq, and I noticed the building previously known as O'Sheas will be transformed into a GAP clothing store.

Now, to be fair I'm sure that the actual clothing store brand that will be replacing O'Sheas hasn't been decided on yet, and the rendering just used GAP as a placeholder of sorts.

I am puzzled why they would want to replace a casino with a clothing store though. Even if they wanted to remove O'Sheas they still could have replaced it with a newer, nicer gaming establishment.

I guess this means retail is more important than drinking and gambling in Las Vegas nowadays. Shopping certainly has its place, but I think even O'Sheas haters would cringe at the thought of replacing it with a GAP.

NOTE: It has been reported that the O'Sheas casino will be re-located to another part of Project Linq, most likely inside the Imperial Palace (which will be remodeled and re-named) so O'Sheas might live on in some form.


Click the image to see a larger version.