For Colleen Birch, being hired as chief operating officer of Fontainebleau Las Vegas in March was a sort of homecoming.
It came nearly 13 years after her first stint at the long-planned Strip resort ended after the Great Recession caused banks to pull financing for the project and construction was shut down.
Even after landing a position with the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas ahead of its 2010 opening, Birch still watched Fontainebleau’s up-and-down progress.
The property, which began construction in 2007, was roughly 70 percent complete when it lost its funding in June 2009. Over the next dozen years, the unfinished building saw two different ownership groups and little progress until Miami-based Fontainebleau Development reacquired the project in 2021 with plans to complete the property, long considered a lynchpin in boosting business prospects on the north end of the Strip.
