Money hopefully coming soon
The dream that is Dream Las Vegas has become a bit of a nightmare. Construction on the luxury hotel-casino has been “fully stopped” because of funding issues. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, developer Bill Shopoff said he owes $25-$35 million for work that has already been done, but does plan to get things back on track “once the terms of the financing are finalized.”
The Dream site is on the east side of Las Vegas Boulevard, just south of Russell Road, near the airport. Mandalay Bay is across the street and Luxor is across the street a bit further north, but in the vicinity of Dream on its side of the Strip, there is essentially nothing. It will not be as large as the mammoth resorts up and down the Strip, but it will still have a 531-room hotel, up from the originally planned 450 rooms.
“Clearly, we’re delayed on getting some financing,” Shopoff told the Review-Journal on Friday, adding that he expects terms to be finalized with the lender within a couple weeks.
Shopoff promises that the lead builder, McCarthy Building Companies, will be paid. Shopoff said that he had a term sheet from a lender ready to go last summer, but things have taken much longer than expected for the financing to be finalized, citing rising interest rates and banking industry troubles.
In the meantime, McCarthy filed a lien notice on the Dream property on March 10. The notice says that $40.2 million in still owed “for work performed” and $43.3 million in payments have been made. Several subcontractors have also filed liens.
Bumpy road so far
Dream has been cursed from the start. The developers revealed plans for the hotel-casino in February 2020, the month before casino shutdowns began because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then they had to make design changes because of the proximity to the airport.
On top of that, there was a legal dispute with the Pinball Hall of Fame, located next door. The Hall of Fame’s new building, constructed in the spring of 2021, overlapped onto Dream’s property by about eight feet. Dream filed a complaint, claiming “unlawful occupation,” and saying that the building prevented a specific drainage outlet from being constructed.
It was determined that a contractor made a mistake when surveying the site, effectively giving the Pinball Hall of Fame a little more property than it had actually purchased.
In the end, the dispute was settled amicably and neither side has a problem with the other. In fact, Shopoff said that the Hall of Fame’s operators were “innocent bystanders,” as they did not know the survey was incorrect. Dream was able to make modifications to the construction plans before ground was broken last year.
