Clark County Commission Approves New “Dream Las Vegas” Hotel and Casino

Las Vegas definitely already has its own fair share of fantastic casinos. However, a new addition has just gotten a go-ahead from the Clark County Commission. The Dream Las Vegas casino will be a brand new 20 story hotel and casino offering 527 rooms for guests. This project will cost greater than $500 million and be erected over five acres sitting on the southern end of Las Vegas Boulevard right between a Harley Davidson dealership and the McCarran International Airport.

This new venture is the brainchild of Bill Shopoff and David Daneshforooz, two real estate entrepreneurs who announced their plans for the casino back in February of 2020. Hopes for the hotel and casino are for construction to begin part way through 2022 and complete with doors opening in 2024.

This new resort will sport 527 rooms leaving it a relatively small hotel by Las Vegas standards. However, according to Shopoff, this is actually one of the resort’s selling points. The idea is to provide visitors with boutique stays for those that aren’t looking to stay in massive hotel-casinos that can go on seemingly forever.

Though perhaps surprisingly, given the hotel certainly isn’t a huge project by Vegas resort standards, the project raised many concerns with lawmakers. These fears centered around the location of the project next to the airport and continued plaguing the project for years with reviews being performed by the FBI, Transportation Security Administration, Secret Service, and the United States Homeland Security.

Multiple airlines believed the plans could pose a danger due to laser lights and illumination originating from the hotel, which they feared could impair a pilot’s vision. The TSA performed an assessment of the plans and found that the resort could pose a risk to passengers and aircraft both from active shooters as well as the ability of individuals to simply toss dangerous items over the fence. Plus, the TSA feared that the resort plans would make the airport more vulnerable to “vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attacks.” The TSA also believed that the airport would be at risk of “long gun attacks” and laser flashing.

In response to these concerns, the project made many changes to the design, including placing the tower further from the shared property line with the hotel and adding a nine-foot-tall security wall. These also included fewer sightlines to the airport, no balconies for rooms, a system to detect if the glass is broken on any windows, another security wall for the pool deck, and changing the parking deck to be enclosed.

These changes were apparently enough to convince the Clark County Commission, which approved the plans in a 6 to 1 vote. Now those looking to enjoy a trip to Las Vegas will have another option available in only a couple years.