The owner and developer of the Fontainebleau Las Vegas plans to expand its footprint. Jeffrey Soffer seeks to buy 5 additional acres, just south of his casino resort on the Strip, for $112.5 million.
Jeffrey Soffer is pictured in front of the Fontainebleau last year. (Image: Bloomberg News)
The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA) is scheduled to vote on whether to approve the sale at its next meeting on Tuesday.
“Almost six months into operations, we are already seeing positive and encouraging results for Fontainebleau Las Vegas,” Soffer, the casino resort’s chair and CEO, said in a statement issued Friday. “This acquisition, which is strategically located for future growth, underscores our confidence in the Las Vegas market.”
Soffer’s plans for the land are not yet known, but he said he “looks forward to disclosing more details in the near future.”
The Riviera gets imploded on June 14, 2016. (Image: cbc.ca)
The parcel is part of a 26-acre site on which the Riviera Hotel & Casino operated from 1955 until 2015.
The LVCVA purchased the property that year for $182.5 million, then imploded the Rat Pack-era resort in 2016. It built new convention space on its 16 easternmost acres, then put the other 10 up for sale in 2019.
Three years later, the LVCVA approved the sale of the land, for $125 million, to a partnership formed by two developers, Brett Torino of Las Vegas and New York’s Paul Kanavos.
It is that partnership, called 65SLVB, that will sell the 5 acres to Soffer, according to the LVCVA meeting agenda.
Nearly Bleau It
The 67-story, blue-tinted Fontainebleau first broke ground in February 2007. That’s so long ago, the Frontier was still operating across the street. Its owners, led by Soffer, planned to open it as a sister property to their Miami resort in October 2009.
Instead, for 16 years, the tallest occupied building in Nevada remained unoccupied. The project changed ownership and names, went bankrupt, started and stopped construction, and then started and stopped again before Soffer reacquired the nearly finished structure, with Koch Real Estate Investments as his current partner, for $650 million.
The Fontainebleau opened on Dec. 13, 2023 with a celebrity-studded party.
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