Australian casino operator Crown Resorts Limited announced on Monday that it has completed the sale of 34.6 acres of vacant land on the Las Vegas Strip to neighboring Wynn Resorts.
In a filing to the Australian Securities Exchange, Crown confirmed that the land, located on the northern end of Las Vegas Boulevard and previously earmarked for the company’s abandoned Alon Las Vegas project, had been sold for US$300 million with Crown’s share of the proceeds coming to approximately US$264 million. Crown added that it had written down the carrying value of its investment to US$200 million in June 2017.
Wynn Resorts hasn’t wasted any time in developing a detailed plan for its newly acquired land, announcing during its 4Q17 earnings call last week that it would build a new hotel, Wynn West, on the old Alon site. Wynn West will boast between 2,000 and 3,000 hotel rooms and connect to the current hotels at Encore and Wynn Las Vegas via an “air conditioned umbilical hallway.”
“What we are going to do across the street is going to go rather quickly because I have been giving it thought for a long time,” said Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn just days before he was embroiled in allegations of long-term sexual misconduct.
“I don’t think the design and development period is going to be very long.”
Wynn added that he expected Wynn West to be completed within three years. It is unknown if recent developments will impact that timeline.
Wynn is currently under investigation by the Wynn Resorts board – and will likely face ongoing scrutiny from further afield – after he was accused of a “decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct” in an explosive Wall Street Journal article published over the weekend.
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