While much of Las Vegas development has been focused on the Strip in recent years, the downtown neighborhood got a notable new property when the Circa Resort & Casino opened at the end of 2020 as the area’s first ground-up new hotel and entertainment venue in more than four decades.
The 1.25 million square-foot adults-only property is the third project developed by downtown-focused businessman Derek Stevens, who, with his brother Greg, previously purchased the Golden Gate Hotel and Casino and then turned the former Fitzgeralds into The D Las Vegas.
In 2015, the Stevens brothers purchased the Las Vegas Club and, in later years, the adjacent Mermaids Casino and Glitter Gulch, along with other neighboring businesses. Once they had the whole 300-foot-by-400-foot block, the team worked with Vegas-based architecture firm Steelman Partners to determine what they wanted for the site, planning demolitions in tandem with new designs. “We really were fortunate that we were able to get all the stars aligned,” Derek Stevens said.
The team started out with some sketches as the project began and “reoriented a couple of key elements” throughout the five-year process. “It's the way the design process works—you design something and you try to mentally take a design and put a pro forma to it,” Stevens said. “You're trying to take a picture and a rendering, and then do a pro forma around them. And then we would take another picture, another rendering, and put a pro forma around that.” As the development took shape, the creative team continued adapting and determining what would work in an “iterative” way, he added.
Construction began in 2019 and the new-build development was halfway complete when the pandemic hit. With so many businesses in the downtown area shut down, noise limits and lane closures in the neighboring streets became less of a concern and the contractors were able to speed up their work, allowing the hotel’s public spaces to open in October, earlier than anticipated. The guestrooms followed in December.
Vegas-Sized
The Stevenses developed the resort in response to evolving customer demand they had experienced at the other two properties. For example, Stevens estimated that the Golden Gate and the D had a total of 60 suites between them. “We knew we could use another 60 just because the demand is there,” he said. “It was really just hanging out and listening to customers when they come up and talk to us and evaluating the numbers to see where we thought the demand was and what we thought made sense economically.”
The team also aimed to bring some Strip-style attractions to the downtown area. Circa Sports is, at three stories high, one of the world’s largest sportsbook venues, with a 78-million-pixel high-def screen that can play up to 19 games at once for up to 1,000 viewers.
The Stadium Swim space, meanwhile, is reportedly the country’s largest pool destination, with six pools, two swim-up bars and a 143-by-40 foot, 14-million-megapixel LED screen in an amphitheater setting. “There’s going to be a great opportunity that really matched up well with the number of days of sunshine in Las Vegas plus the climate in Las Vegas with an aquatic venue with your day pools and video screens to incorporate both music and sports,” Stevens said. (The pools can be heated in cooler weather so the venue can be open year-round.)
One element from Downtown Las Vegas’ history has been maintained at the new resort: a “kicking cowgirl” neon sign called Vegas Vickie that first appeared at the former Glitter Gulch in 1980. “Now it's a signature feature inside the resort,” Stevens said. “That was really the one thing from years past—decades past—that we preserved and we incorporated into the design of that new project.”
Circa Las Vegas
LOCATION
Downtown Las Vegas, on the site of the former Las Vegas Club and Glitter GulchOPENING
October 2020NUMBER OF ROOMS
777HOTEL MANAGER
William BaezWEBSITE
www.circalasvegas.comOWNERS
Derek and Greg StevensMANAGEMENT COMPANY
NAOPENING OBSTACLE:
“You don't want to be in construction during a pandemic,” Derek Stevens said. Once COVID-19 hit, the team made sure all workers were tested regularly and provided with N95 respirators to help keep everyone as safe as possible. While some elements of construction were facilitated by the quarantine, the team also faced logistical challenges like how many people could work on a given floor or how many could be in an elevator at any one time. Staggered shifts made it possible for a full workforce to keep building the hotel while maintaining reasonable distances, Stevens said.