Hard Rock Las Vegas hosted a topping off ceremony Friday to commemorate the placing of the final beam on its Guitar Hotel that hovers over the Strip.
Seminole Gaming and Hard Rock International are building the hotel on the reimagined Mirage property in time for a 2027 opening. The cost falls between a reported $4 billion to $5 billion.
Hard Rock International, owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, acquired the Mirage in December 2022 from MGM Resorts International for $1 billion. It shuttered the property and its 3,000-room resort in July 2024 to make way for a redesigned resort that fits the Hard Rock brand identity. The Guitar Hotel measures more than 700 feet and will have 650 suites.
“This event is in honor of our construction partners at PENTA and McCarthy and the thousands of hardworking men and women on our construction team,” said Jim Allen, CEO of Seminole Gaming & Chairman of Hard Rock International.
Hard Rock International executive leadership, Seminole Tribal Council, construction partners from The PENTA Building Group, McCarthy Building Companies and Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom were in attendance.
“Topping out this project represents far more than a construction milestone. It marks a defining moment in reshaping the Las Vegas skyline and introducing a new city icon,” said Jeff Walker, vice president of construction at The PENTA Building Group.
The property construction began in the summer 2024 and has employed more than 5,000 workers since the start of the project.
There will be a full redo of the 3,000-room Mirage tower, a redesign of the casino, a redesign of the pool, and an additional pool for the guitar tower. The new property will feature more than 3,700 hotel rooms, approximately 175,000 square feet of gaming space, over 200,000 square feet of meeting space, new restaurants, lounges and retail outlets, and employ about 6,000.
The project is expected to be one of the last major developments on the Strip for years to come because of the cost of building in the corridor.
“I just don’t think it pencils economically,” said Bill Lerner, a managing director for CBRE and founder of Union Gaming, who spoke to commercial real estate executives during a luncheon at The Orleans. “The pool of capital that you actually need to support ground-up development on the Las Vegas Strip corridor I don’t think is affordable. Lenders aren’t comfortable underwriting new development on the Strip corridor. It’s way too hard to compete with all the multi-properties. The Cosmopolitan finally figured it out after a lot of years of being a single property in a market where you have a few parties that own just about everything and of course now MGM owns it.
“Fontainebleau is struggling for numerous reasons, including not having a feeder property of note,” Lerner said. “It’s improving, but the comps are very difficult. The cost of capital to do it is way too high and development cost to build a competitive property is prohibitive. The capex dollars we will see here will be to refresh (existing properties) to remain competitive, but post the Hard Rock redeveloping The Mirage, I think it could be a really long time.”
