Clark County Approves 752-Room Heart-Shaped Las Vegas Strip Resort on Former SkyVue Site

Clark County commissioners have unanimously approved plans for a 752-room hotel-casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip, clearing the way for redevelopment of the long-abandoned SkyVue site directly across Las Vegas Boulevard from Mandalay Bay. The nearly 12-acre property has sat largely vacant for more than a decade after an ambitious observation wheel project collapsed under financial strain.

Developer Eli Applebaum bought the site this spring for $70 million from owners who had acquired it through bankruptcy proceedings. With zoning approvals now in hand, the project moves from concept to construction pipeline on one of the Strip’s most conspicuous vacant lots.

A Heart-Shaped Tower Rising From an Old Ferris Wheel Site

The approved design centers on a heart-shaped hotel tower wrapped in a large LED facade, paired with a covered pedestrian plaza modeled after the Fremont Street Experience downtown. The plan also calls for a midair restaurant built around the site’s existing concrete support towers, along with additional restaurants, retail space, an outdoor recreation area and a parking garage.

Those leftover concrete towers, known locally as the “matchsticks,” will not be torn down. Instead, they’ll be reinforced and folded into the new development, with an added support pillar to accommodate the planned sky restaurant. Nancy Amundsen, a land-use consultant representing Applebaum, said the structures would be strengthened to “hopefully make it look a little nicer” than the bare towers that have loomed over the site since construction stalled.

Applebaum’s team also confirmed talks with neighboring operator MGM Resorts International, whose Mandalay Bay resort sits directly across the boulevard. Amundsen summed up MGM’s stance simply: “They just want something to happen,” referring to the property’s years of stalled redevelopment attempts.

From 874 Rooms to 752 After an FAA Height Review

The project didn’t clear approval on the first pass through as originally envisioned. Applebaum initially pitched an 874-room resort, but the height was trimmed by about 60 feet after coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration and Clark County’s Department of Aviation, given the site’s proximity to Harry Reid International Airport’s flight paths. That height reduction brought the final room count down to 752.

The redevelopment closes a long and troubled chapter for the parcel. The original SkyVue project, announced in 2011, proposed a more than $100 million attraction anchored by a 500-foot observation wheel along with a roller coaster, retail and restaurant space — a direct answer to the success of the High Roller wheel at The LINQ. Construction on the support towers began but halted when financing fell apart, leaving the unfinished “matchsticks” as one of the Strip’s most visible symbols of a stalled development. Former SkyVue developer Howard Bulloch previously said the property had been “in escrow numerous times,” but prospective buyers “were just not able to arrange their financing as they had promised.”

With the Clark County Commission’s unanimous vote now on the books, Applebaum’s project becomes the latest attempt to finally put the site to use — this time leaning into the unfinished structures rather than erasing them, betting that a distinctive heart-shaped tower and a rebuilt sky restaurant can succeed where a Ferris wheel could not.

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