David Daneshforooz from Contour speaks about the upcoming Dream hotel and casino at the Las Vegas Ceremonial Shovel Groundbreaking event. Friday, July 8, 2022. Brian Ramos
Saturday, July 9, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The north Strip has garnered attention in recent years with developments like Resorts World Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Convention Center expansion. But it was a venture on the south side of the boulevard that had people talking Friday.
A rendering of the Dream Las Vegas hotel and casino.
Developers broke ground on a 20-story luxury hotel and casino on a 5-acre site just north of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership. The resort is expected to open in late 2024.
Dream Las Vegas will feature 531 rooms, a 27,000-square-foot casino, a three-level pool area and dayclub, and numerous dining and nightlife spots. It will also have a 12,000-square-foot conference center.
It will sit between the motorcycle dealership and the Pinball Hall of Fame, just steps from the famous Las Vegas welcome sign.
The project — construction is expected to cost about $550 million — is a collaboration of Shopoff Realty Investments and Contour, California-based real estate development firms, and the Dream Hotel Group.
Based in New York City, the Dream group has luxury hotels there and in places like Miami, Hollywood, Nashville, Tenn., and Bangkok.
The ownership group for the resort purchased the land for the project for $21 million, shortly before the pandemic shut down the Strip for over two months, according to Clark County records.
“We acquired this in February 2020,” said Bill Shopoff, president of Shopoff Realty Investments. “As we all know, the world shut down right after that. You have to be an optimist as a developer. We had confidence that Las Vegas would rebound, and it has come back.”
Developer David Daneshforooz of Contour said celebrities and professional athletes were known to frequent Dream properties. A Dream hotel a short drive from Allegiant Stadium, home of the Las Vegas Raiders, makes a lot of sense, he said.
“Being on the south end of the Strip and being in proximately to the stadium, I knew that would be a great fit,” Daneshforooz said.
Nebraska-based architecture firm DLR Group will design the resort. McCarthy Building Companies Inc. is the general contractor.
Jay Stein, CEO of Dream Hotel Group, said the property won’t be anything comparable to megaresorts like the Bellagio or Caesars Palace, which is exactly how the company wants it. Dream likes to focus on quality, he said.
Stein pointed to the company’s recently opened luxury resort about 100 miles north of New York City.
At the Chatwal Lodge on the shores of the Lake Toronto Reservoir, the average nightly room rate for the resort’s 11 rooms is $2,500.
Dream Las Vegas won’t be that exclusive, but it will be “something that’s going to be different,” Stein said.
“I remember coming to Las Vegas with my dad, who loved Las Vegas, in the 1950s and 1960s,” Stein said. “I remember all the hotels from back then, and they’re not all that different from what’s here today.”
Dream operates more than a dozen hotels around the world, with another 25properties in the works.
Bill Smith, a former vice president of global construction for Las Vegas Sands and design executive for MGM Resorts International, has been hired as the point man for the project.
“This and the Pinball Hall of Fame helps us finish off an important part of the boulevard that all of us have seen undeveloped for so many years,” Clark County Commissioner Jim Gibson said. “This is enormous.”
