Billion-Dollar Moulin Rouge Remake on Tap

LAS VEGAS-Plans have been submitted to city officials here for a billion-dollar project that would remake the Moulin Rouge Hotel and Casino, an historic 17-acre property here that helped further the civil rights movement. One of the investor-developers directing the effort tell GlobeSt.com that upwards of $1 billion will be invested in a multi-phase project, the $300-million to $400-million first phase of which includes 700 new hotel rooms, four restaurants, convention and meeting rooms, as well as a pool-side night club, concert venue, jazz center, and 50,000 sf of retail and spa facilities.

Opened in May 1955 and marketed as “the nation’s first major interracial hotel,” it attracted the top entertainers of the day before shutting down six months later after running into financial trouble along with several other hotels that year, according to reports. Save for its use in 1960 to host a meeting that averted a civil rights protest in the city, the property remained shuttered until the early 1990s, when it was used as a setting for the filming of the 1995 movie “Casino.” In 2003, an unsolved fire gutted the complex, leaving only the facade and the neon sign that advertised the resort’s name in cursive. The following year, Moulin Rouge Development Corp. acquired the property for $12.1 million and announced plans for the $200-million renovation. Today’s announcement resurrects those plans.

The property is located west of the Downtown core at 900 W. Bonanza Ave., which would make it visible from both the 15 and 515 freeways. David Peter, a principal with Washington, DC-based Republic Urban Properties LLC, Moulin Rouge Development Corp.’s joint venture partner in the redevelopment effort, tells GlobeSt.com that the tentative plan is to break ground next year and complete the first phase redevelopment before the end of 2010. The necessary debt and equity financing for the project is about a year out, he says, but likely would include institutional money.