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If you’ve driven the Las Vegas Strip lately, you may have noticed some major construction going on just below the Stratosphere, near the northern end of the Strip. There are two major projects here, the first of which is the SLS Las Vegas, a 1,600-room luxury casino resort from growing hospitality company sbe. This will be the fourth SLS property in the US (New York, South Beach and LA, while sbe also operates Redbury Hotels and the Raleigh in South Beach).

The just announced opening date is Labor Day weekend, and this will be the most notable new hotel opening in the city at least since the Nobu Hotel a year ago, which I reviewed in detail in this column. The big difference is that while Nobu was a boutique hotel within Caesars Palace, the SLS Las Vegas is a full-blown standalone property. It will include a restaurant by famed chef José Andrés, a branch of Katsuya by Starck, a “reinvention” of LA nightspot The Sayers Club, an outpost of Umami Burger, and several other nightlife, dining and entertainment experiences.

The SLS occupies the site of the former Sahara, largely unrecognizable after an estimated $415 million rebuild. The resort is located at the north end of the Strip, a formerly unlucky area that has not shone for the nearby Stratosphere, Circus Circus or Riviera and certainly not for the shuttered Sahara. But there is renewed hope here, especially given the area’s proximity to suddenly hot again old Downtown Vegas, with several attractions and new eateries, many of which I have written about here before, including the Mob Museum, the Neon Museum, and even a branch of what is arguably America’s best pizzeria. While there are some new and renovated hip small hotels, notably The D, Golden Gate and Plaza, what Downtown does not have is a big time Vegas mega-resort. Once a slightly remote suburb of the main action area of the Strip, this zone is suddenly a bridge between the city’s two tourism epicenters. A second huge luxury resort, Genting Group’s $4 billion-plus Resorts World, is under construction nearby. Intended to rival the immense MGM Grand, the city’s (and nation’s) largest, with more than 6,000 rooms. Resorts World is expected to open next year (it began life as Boyd Gaming’s planned Echelon resort).

While the SLS will be the biggest opening in Las Vegas this year, it is hardly the only one. Caesars Entertainment recently christened its new center Strip boutique resort The Cromwell (it was originally intended to be the Gansevoort Las Vegas). While the name has changed, this unique project, a nearly $200 million rebuild of the former Bill’s Gambling Hall and tiny by Vegas standards with less than 200 rooms, will still be home to the first restaurant by food celebrity Giada De Laurentiis and to Drai’s Beach Club and Nightclub, a 65,000 square-foot indoor/outdoor nightclub and rooftop pool experience by local nightlife impresario Victor Drai. You can read my interview with Giada De Laurentiis and learn more about her new restaurant here. The Cromwell will begin taking reservations this month and opens in the spring.

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