Wynn Las Vegas shuts down lagoon project, will restore golf course
The lagoon was supposed to be built on the golf course site behind Encore and Wynn. (photo by Wynn Las Vegas)
Wynn Las Vegas announced on Wednesday, during an earnings conference call, that it is no longer going to build the extravagant lagoon theme park it had been planning for a couple of years, and instead will restore the 18-hole Wynn Golf Club.
In early 2016, Steve Wynn, who was CEO of Wynn Resorts at the time, and Wynn Las Vegas announced it would build Paradise Park, which would include a 400,000 square-foot convention center along with a 38-acre lagoon with three hotel towers. The entire project was going to cost over $3 billion.
The lagoon was supposed to be built on the golf course site behind Encore Resort and Wynn Las Vegas. However, the $1.5 billion lagoon project is no more and the golf course, which closed in December 2017, will be reopened.
The plan for the convention center continues and the hope is to have it open in 12-18 months.
According to Craig Billings, CFO of Wynn Resorts, the company will turn to Tom Fazio, who designed the original golf course. Fazio will redesign the two holes that were taken up for the convention center. The goal is to have the golf course back up and running before the completion of the convention center.
Another part of this project is a hotel and casino expansion. In order to pursue that, Wynn purchased 38 acres on the Las Vegas Strip. It will take two years for the designing and beginning of development to take place, according to Billings.
On top of all of this, Wynn Resorts is dealing with the building of its $2.6 billion resort near Boston and planning a seven-acre site next to Wynn Palace in Macau. However, the company seems very confident in the Las Vegas project despite having other developments taking place at the same time.
“From April 2016 to today, we always struggled with Phase 2 of Paradise Park,” Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox told analysts during the conference call. “How are we going to make a room tower in a town with a lot of rooms pencil along with a lagoon? We weren’t really interested in building a large public swimming pool for the Las Vegas Strip. So we just decided, ‘Let’s go with Phase 1.’ We know the convention center is going to work.”