Vegas casinos go green

Its good to see something positive associated with the Las Vegas Strip. It looks like many of the new mega resorts are trying to go green;

A total of 15 major new building projects in Sin City – including MGM Mirage’s new 4,000-room CityCenter set to open in 2009 – are seeking the building council’s stringent Leadership in Environment and Energy Design (LEED) Certification.

“When you are building a large-scale hotel, the long-term benefits and savings that go along with building green are huge,” says Katz.

Add the tax breaks from the state of Nevada that could put as much as three times the extra cost of constructing environmentally friendly buildings back into developers’ pockets and the odds are stacked in favour of going green.

You should actually take a look at this whole article, its pretty neat.

http://www.thestar.com/Travel/article/356799

Cosmopolitan Resort Casino foreclosure

Tough credit markets hurt. This would not have been an issue less than one year ago. It has got a prime location next door to the Bellagio and CityCenter (which includes Veer, Harmon Hotel, Mandarin Oriental, and Vdara Hotel), and across the street from plante hollywood.

The developer of the Cosmopolitan Resort Casino, a $3.9 billion condo-hotel complex on the Las Vegas Strip, has been notified by its primary lender that it will begin foreclosure proceedings.

The move by Deutsche Bank AG, the lender on a $760 million senior loan, comes after the developer, Ian Bruce Eichner, wasn’t able to finalize a deal for new financing amid the credit crunch. Mr. Eichner in late February cut a tentative deal with two of his other lenders, Global Hyatt Corp. and New York hedge fund Marathon Asset Management, for a possible rescue of the twin-tower project. A default on the loan in January triggered automatic defaults on an additional $175 million in loans.

Courtesy of the WSJ.com