Caesars’ empire will soon grow a little larger. Caesars Palace, the Las Vegas Strip resort-casino, will open a $375-million, 668-room hotel tower addition on January 2, 2012. The project shell was completed two years ago, but the interior was mothballed due to reduced visitor demand.
The joint venture of Marnell Corrao Association, Las Vegas, and Keating Building Corp., Philadelphia, is the general contractor. The 23-story Octavius Tower is the final component of $860 million in property-wide upgrades that began in 2008, under separate contracts, including a 263,000-sq-ft convention expansion, a Forum Tower renovation, and a new pool complex.
Construction on the cast-in-place concrete, EIFS and glass-clad hotel expansion halted in January 2009 but resumed early this summer. The furlough helped lower building costs once pegged at $1 billion. The 316-ft-tall building, which abuts Flamingo Road along the southern edge of the Caesars property, was originally scheduled to open in mid-2009.
Marnell Architecture, a unit of Marnell Corrao, is the executive architect, with Bergman Walls & Associates, Las Vegas, as architect-of-record. The Octavius Tower consists of 550-sq-ft rooms, with 60 suites and six luxury villas up to 10,000 sq ft in size. Wilson & Associates, Dallas, designed the tower’s interiors, with KNA Design, Los Angeles, responsible for the room and suites. Octavius marks Caesars’ sixth tower, on 85 acres, giving it over 4,000 rooms.
Caesars also made headlines earlier this month with its planned $550-million development of an open-air promenade along the key section of the Strip across Las Vegas Boulevard from the existing complex. Dubbed Linq, it will feature a mix of shops, restaurants, nightlife and a massive observation wheel.
