Fontainebleau Las Vegas ‘fb’ Lettering Adorns Towering Blue Strip Structure

Fontainebleau Las Vegas is a stark reminder of the 2008 Great Recession. But the young owners of the longtime Strip eyesore say the towing 67-story drear building is on a itinerary to completion.

Koch Real Estate Investments, a subsidiary of the Robert Koch Industries conglomerate empire, and Fontainebleau Development acquired the stalled Las Vegas Strip casino-resort in Feb for an unrevealed sum. Fontainebleau CEO Jeffrey Soffer was the archetype visionary in arrears the Strip undertaking.

This week, the Fontainebleau’s logotype featuring its iconic “fb” stylized lettering made famous inwards Miami Beach began sledding upwardly on the Las Vegas cassino exterior.

@VitalVegas Sir Thomas More signs… pic.twitter.com/fTYExQGcDy

— Chris Donnelly (@donnellynm) December 15, 2021

Koch and Fontainebleau intend to complete the cassino resort — which is rough 75 percent finished — and commence its operations inwards later(a) 2023.

Structure Well-Preserved

Fontainebleau Las Vegas has sat slug since billionaire corporate raider Carl Icahn acquired the insolvent unfinished cassino resort in 2010 for $151 million. Icahn ne'er intended to finish do work on the building, opting instead to keep the attribute as an investment vehicle.

Icahn’s wager paid off, as the famed investor sold the resort hotel septenary years later for $600 million. That buyer — Steve Witkoff — encountered funding difficultness and pandemic-relating impediments, which led to him selling the belongings to Koch and Soffer this year.

Despite sitting laze for more than a decade, Soffer says the building is sound.

The edifice is inward mint candy condition,” Soffer explained inwards a resign to Casino.org today. “We hold already commenced construction. We are excited to spend a penny this daydream a reality.”

Fontainebleau Miami Beach is I of the most famous hotel resorts in the United States. Designed by Esther Morris Lapidus, the Fontainebleau opened in 1954 and remains single of Miami Beach’s premiere destinations.

Las Vegas Goal

Soffer is the son of Donald Soffer. The latter’s existent demesne holdings business firm Turnberry Associates acquired the Fontainebleau Miami Beach resort hotel inwards the 2000s amid the hotel’s possess financial difficulties.

The younger Soffer says he’s had the end of expanding the Fontainebleau brandmark elsewhere inwards the US ever so since his sept took check of the Miami Beach icon. Las Vegas, he says, has ever been the “number ane choice.”

That is at present seemly a reality, as Fontainebleau Development plans to have all areas of the Las Vegas Strip composite ready for business organization inwards the net billet of 2023. When it opens, Fontainebleau Las Vegas will get 3,700 guestrooms, 550,000 square up feet of normal space, a spa and wellness facilities, a “world-class assemblage of restaurants and shops,” and indoor and outdoor pool complexes providing an raiment of leisure time experiences.

Fontainebleau Development President Brett Mufson adds that the COVID-19 pandemic and Las Vegas’ bounce-back has only if increased the company’s optimism regarding its Strip enterprise.

“The Las Vegas tourism industry has shown incredible resiliency,” Mufson said.