Las Vegas History:
[h=1]Visit the Vegas that never happened: A look back at projects that fizzled[/h]
Courtesy
The Starship Enterprise, 1992, is a proposed mega-attraction designed by Landmark Entertainment Group with a life-sized ship as long as the Eiffel Tower, in permanent dry dock on Fremont Street.
By <cite>Ric Anderson</cite> (contact)
Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014 | 2 a.m.
After waking up in your suite at the Titanic, a giant resort shaped like infamous ocean liner, you take a cab to the space-themed Moon hotel-casino on your way to an afternoon of motocross riding and wakeboarding at Vegas Extreme amusement park.
Along the way you pass Parabounce Vegas, where people are playing an airborne version of bumper cars in which they bounce off of each other while strapped to huge helium balloons. Those who float high enough can catch a glimpse of a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge outside a San Francisco-themed casino.
Welcome to the Vegas that never happened.
The city's history is peppered with attractions that existed only on paper and vanished not long after being floated. Here are some of them:
[h=2]Vegas Extreme[/h]
Australian entrepreneur Josh Kearney's $50 million amusement park would have featured a white sand beach, wave machines and a 7-acre lake for jet skiing, wakeboarding and more. Kearney also envisioned a dirt track for motorcycling and BMX cycling, and 60 hotel rooms made of repurposed shipping containers. An on-site organic vegetable garden would have supplied food to patrons.
Eighty percent of the park's energy needs would have been provided by solar panels and wind turbines.
"I'm a big dreamer," Kearney said when announcing the project in 2013.
The project remains in dream phase.
[h=2]City-themed[/h]
Had things gone differently, the Fontainebleau site would have housed a resort kind of like New York New York but based on London. The developers, Turnberry Associates, envisioned replicas of Big Ben and the Tower Bridge as part of a 44-story 2,047-room hotel.
South of the site, casino developer Phil Ruffin proposed replacing the New Frontier, which he owned at the time, with a San Francisco-themed resort called City by the Bay. The New Frontier is gone, having been imploded, but the site is still empty.
[h=2]Desert Kingdom[/h]
Proposed in the early 1990s, Desert Kingdom was a $750 million theme part, casino and hotel complex featuring a 3,500-room hotel, a 135,000-square-foot casino south of the old Desert Inn.
[h=2]SkyVue[/h]
The race was on: Which observation wheel would be finished first? Construction crews broke ground on both the High Roller wheel in the Linq complex and the SkyVue project across from Mandalay Bay began in 2011. But after workers completed the support arms for SkyVue, the project stalled while the High Roller took off. SkyVue is still two concrete sticks poking out of the ground, and scaffolding has been removed.
[h=2]Titanic[/h]
In 1999, two years the movie "Titanic" was released, Las Vegas businessman Bob Stupak announced he was raising money to build a Titanic-themed resort. Stupak's version would have been more than 400 feet high, more that twice the height of the ship, and would have cost $1.2 billion. Stupak, who had turned Vegas World into a moneymaker and conceived the Stratosphere, sought rezoning of property near Las Vegas Boulevard and Park Paseo, just south of Charleston Boulevard, for the project. But neighbors didn't like it, and the Las Vegas City Council denied Stupak's request for rezoning.
[h=2]"Star Trek"[/h]
Entertainment designer Gary Goddard revealed he submitted a proposal in 1992 to build a full-scale version of the USS Enterprise from "Star Trek" in downtown Las Vegas to help lure tourists away from the Strip. According to lore, downtown developers opted instead to build the Fremont Street Experience. The $150 million Enterprise project, which Goddard said he created as an entry for a contest about how to revitalize downtown, was to be about 1,000 feet long.
[h=2]Xanadu[/h]
Martin Stern Jr., who designed the International (now Westgate Las Vegas) and original MGM Grand (now Bally's), incorporated ideas that would prove visionary in his 1,730-room Xanadu resort project. It featured an open atrium, similar to the one at the Luxor, and the first parking garage at a Strip property.
But the Xanadu, which was to be built on the site where the Excalibur now stands, fell apart because of a dispute over infrastructure. Officials wanted developers to pay for installation of a sewer line that developers didn't believe was needed.
[h=2]Parabounce Vegas[/h]
Imagine this: 20 people, strapped to 22-foot helium balloons, floating and soaring hundreds of feet in the air in a 100,000-square-foot “bubble dome.”
Think of it as “3-D bumper cars,” said Stephen Meadows, who conceived the project.
That was in 2010. Four years later, the project still hasn't gotten off of the ground.
[h=1]Visit the Vegas that never happened: A look back at projects that fizzled[/h]
The Starship Enterprise, 1992, is a proposed mega-attraction designed by Landmark Entertainment Group with a life-sized ship as long as the Eiffel Tower, in permanent dry dock on Fremont Street.
By <cite>Ric Anderson</cite> (contact)
Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014 | 2 a.m.
After waking up in your suite at the Titanic, a giant resort shaped like infamous ocean liner, you take a cab to the space-themed Moon hotel-casino on your way to an afternoon of motocross riding and wakeboarding at Vegas Extreme amusement park.
Along the way you pass Parabounce Vegas, where people are playing an airborne version of bumper cars in which they bounce off of each other while strapped to huge helium balloons. Those who float high enough can catch a glimpse of a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge outside a San Francisco-themed casino.
Welcome to the Vegas that never happened.
The city's history is peppered with attractions that existed only on paper and vanished not long after being floated. Here are some of them:
[h=2]Vegas Extreme[/h]
Australian entrepreneur Josh Kearney's $50 million amusement park would have featured a white sand beach, wave machines and a 7-acre lake for jet skiing, wakeboarding and more. Kearney also envisioned a dirt track for motorcycling and BMX cycling, and 60 hotel rooms made of repurposed shipping containers. An on-site organic vegetable garden would have supplied food to patrons.
Eighty percent of the park's energy needs would have been provided by solar panels and wind turbines.
"I'm a big dreamer," Kearney said when announcing the project in 2013.
The project remains in dream phase.
[h=2]City-themed[/h]
Had things gone differently, the Fontainebleau site would have housed a resort kind of like New York New York but based on London. The developers, Turnberry Associates, envisioned replicas of Big Ben and the Tower Bridge as part of a 44-story 2,047-room hotel.
South of the site, casino developer Phil Ruffin proposed replacing the New Frontier, which he owned at the time, with a San Francisco-themed resort called City by the Bay. The New Frontier is gone, having been imploded, but the site is still empty.
[h=2]Desert Kingdom[/h]
Proposed in the early 1990s, Desert Kingdom was a $750 million theme part, casino and hotel complex featuring a 3,500-room hotel, a 135,000-square-foot casino south of the old Desert Inn.
[h=2]SkyVue[/h]
The race was on: Which observation wheel would be finished first? Construction crews broke ground on both the High Roller wheel in the Linq complex and the SkyVue project across from Mandalay Bay began in 2011. But after workers completed the support arms for SkyVue, the project stalled while the High Roller took off. SkyVue is still two concrete sticks poking out of the ground, and scaffolding has been removed.
[h=2]Titanic[/h]
In 1999, two years the movie "Titanic" was released, Las Vegas businessman Bob Stupak announced he was raising money to build a Titanic-themed resort. Stupak's version would have been more than 400 feet high, more that twice the height of the ship, and would have cost $1.2 billion. Stupak, who had turned Vegas World into a moneymaker and conceived the Stratosphere, sought rezoning of property near Las Vegas Boulevard and Park Paseo, just south of Charleston Boulevard, for the project. But neighbors didn't like it, and the Las Vegas City Council denied Stupak's request for rezoning.
[h=2]"Star Trek"[/h]
Entertainment designer Gary Goddard revealed he submitted a proposal in 1992 to build a full-scale version of the USS Enterprise from "Star Trek" in downtown Las Vegas to help lure tourists away from the Strip. According to lore, downtown developers opted instead to build the Fremont Street Experience. The $150 million Enterprise project, which Goddard said he created as an entry for a contest about how to revitalize downtown, was to be about 1,000 feet long.
[h=2]Xanadu[/h]
Martin Stern Jr., who designed the International (now Westgate Las Vegas) and original MGM Grand (now Bally's), incorporated ideas that would prove visionary in his 1,730-room Xanadu resort project. It featured an open atrium, similar to the one at the Luxor, and the first parking garage at a Strip property.
But the Xanadu, which was to be built on the site where the Excalibur now stands, fell apart because of a dispute over infrastructure. Officials wanted developers to pay for installation of a sewer line that developers didn't believe was needed.
[h=2]Parabounce Vegas[/h]
Imagine this: 20 people, strapped to 22-foot helium balloons, floating and soaring hundreds of feet in the air in a 100,000-square-foot “bubble dome.”
Think of it as “3-D bumper cars,” said Stephen Meadows, who conceived the project.
That was in 2010. Four years later, the project still hasn't gotten off of the ground.
