Las Vegas’ tourism agency wants to buy the Riviera Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, to promptly raze it to the ground to make way for a new convention center development.
The Riviera is one of sin city’s oldest casino-hotels but has flirted with bankruptcy several times in recent years.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority wants to spend $191 million to buy the 2,075-room casino hotel and it would then close within six months to prepare for its eventual demolition.
It would form part of what the agency calls the ‘Las Vegas Global Business District,’ which hopes to add an extra one million square feet of exhibition and meeting space.
LVCVA board members are scheduled to vote on the proposal this week.
The aging property is owned by Riviera Holdings Corporation, which has an affiliation with Starwood Capital Group.
The aim is to secure a prime location for conventions on the Strip, said Jim Murren, CEO of MGM Resorts.
"To have a Strip presence for the first time is also really important. That the convention-goer gets that sense of arrival. It would be a vast improvement over what we have today," Murren said.
The existing Las Vegas Convention Center is over a block away set behind the Strip.
