When the SLS Las Vegas launched a $100 million renovation last October, one of the spaces slated for an update was the casino.
Now on phase three of four for the gaming floor, the renovations are taking the previous owner's industrial design and making it brighter, lighter and more colorful. At one point during the process, a construction wall divided the 60,000-square-foot casino filled with table games and slot machines.
"One half was done and the other half was not," said vice president of marketing Rachel Hunt. "It almost looked staged. It was literally night and day."
Spending $100 million to renovate a resort that just reopened four years ago may raise some eyebrows, but the changes reflect Alex Meruelo's vision for his first Las Vegas casino, acquired in 2018, and an effort to capitalize on growing momentum on the north end of the Strip.
"A lot of our changes in general are trying to play up the iconicness of this property," said Hunt. "We're not on the scale of some of our sister properties. We can make it intimate and personalized and unexpected."
To that end, the renovations are sweeping across the hotel and casino, lowering and lightening the ceilings above the casino floor, which will be complete this summer; updating the hotel lobby and renovating the hotel towers, which had been designed by Philippe Starck under previous owners SBE. Gone will be the modern opulence aesthetic, with its faux baroque decor and cheeky details, replaced by a design that's more streamlined and traditional with nods to the property's long history (it opened as the Sahara in the early 1950s) in some of the motifs and colors.
SLS's food-and-beverage and entertainment programs are also in flux, though the resort's flagship restaurant, Bazaar Meat by Jose Andres, is staying put, as is the Sayer's Club, which hosts resident comedians like Eddie Griffin and Monique. The Grand Tower, formerly a short-lived W Hotel, is now integrated into the rest of the property, with a separate entrance and meetings facility available for VIPs and groups that prefer a more private experience.
Hunt said the smaller footprint of the resort lends itself to more personalized service and offers groups a variety of spaces they can buy out and take over.
"We're pretty unique in that," she said. "That's harder to find at some of the bigger properties, where they might not own the restaurants, or some of these individual places."
The renovations also aim to capture some of Meruelo's customers from his Reno casino, the Grand Sierra Resort, providing them an experience they already know and like. And the project is timed to seize the momentum of new construction in the SLS's North Strip neighborhood. Both Genting Resorts World and the Drew are slated to open nearby in late 2020, and the expanded Las Vegas Convention Center will be open in time for January's CES 2021.
"There's not a lot of areas of the Strip that can grow anymore. The growth is definitely going to be down here," said Hunt. "That's part of what all the renovations are about: making sure we're ready when all that growth starts to come."