Over the weekend, we managed to walk around the newly opened Palazzo Las Vegas and to be honest, we weren't blown away but what we saw.
Granted, it's still the first few days of opening but the place was dead. We can't ever recall being in such a dead gambling hall before. On a Friday night. At 11pm. However, as soon as you walked over to the Venetian's main gambling floor, things were popping again. Maybe the folks in there just didn't know about the Palazzo yet.
We also popped into Jay-Z's club 40/40 and the same could be said there. The club has a great lay-out and plays killer hip-hop music, although we could do without the giant screen playing non-stop ESPN. Still, the place wasn't even half-full while Tao at the Venetian was horrendously crowded (thanks to a party for porn star Brianna Banks.)
Hopefully, the Palazzo's opening weekend this weekend will be more crowded than what we saw.
While the Palazzo Las Vegas had initially hoped to open on Dec. 20th, it settled for opening up some of its casino space, the lobby and an atrium linking the new hotel with the next-door Venetian.
According to Globe Street, rooms will open on Jan. 6th but there isn't any availability until Jan. 9th with rooms going for around $200. The full grand-opening is still set for Jan. 17th. Our reservation is for Jan. 10th so let's hope the the rooms are open by then.
Meanwhile, if you're looking for a new place to party on the strip, Jay-Z's 40/40 Club did open over New Year's Eve weekend, despite reports that the place failed inspection and didn't have proper permits.
Whatever shizz went down, peeps came out in full force to celebrate the opening which just happened to also be LeBron James' b-day. The club is actually an upscale sports bar which features 85 plasma screen TV's, 5 exclusive VIP rooms, and 24kt gold and platinum floors. Pimp!
If Jay-Z's got 99 problems, then opening a club in Las Vegas is not one of them anymore.
We should have added this to our 2008 New York City Hotel Openings Preview story from this morning. Apparently, rapper/hip-hopper/mogul Jay-Z (aka Shawn Carter) wants to be a hotelier.
The Jigga man and some developers have bought a property in NYC at 510 West 22nd St. for his first hotel of many to be called J Hotels.
Currently the site is occupied by a five-story, 88,000-square foot warehouse and parking facility net leased to Time Warner Cable, Inc., which will vacate the premises.
The developers on the project are Charlie Blaichman and Abe Shnay of SK Development and CB Developers. The deal totaled about $66 million (including air rights)and we're guessing they are going to plunk down some more to actually build the hotel. So we predict a 2009/2010 opening.
As for the hotel, Jay-Z intends for it to be an upscale five-star 150,000-square-foot luxury hotel. We bet a 40/40 club, a Roc-a-wear store and a suite designed by Beyonce will be included.
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by juliana
