Aladdin Is to Become Planet Hollywood Casino

Monday, June 23rd, 2003

I was just at the Aladdin last week, and I had no idea that it was on its way out. From Aladdin Is to Become Planet Hollywood Casino:

The ailing Aladdin casino in Las Vegas will become a Planet Hollywood casino and a Sheraton hotel, according to a ruling by a federal bankruptcy-court judge on Friday.

I don’t have a good feeling about this:

During the next 18 months or so, the casino will be renovated — getting a new facade, refurbished suites and other changes — into a celebrity-theme Planet Hollywood. “It’s a chance to put Planet back into ascendancy,” Mr. Earl said in an interview. He and Bay Harbour recently brought Planet Hollywood, an Orlando, Fla., company Mr. Earl co-founded, out of bankruptcy-court protection.

The top floor will have “celebrity suites” devoted to the lives and careers of various stars. One floor below will have suites themed along the lines of Hollywood memorabilia, such as a room with the ice pick from the movie “Basic Instinct” and another room with the bed from the Madonna film “Truth or Dare.”

I was quite impressed with the Desert Passage mall:

New entrances will be opened to the Desert Passage shopping mall, and new restaurants placed with doors opening to both the mall and casino. The mall was designed to be part of the casino but was largely cut off from it after relations soured early on between the mall owners, Chicago-based Trizec Properties Inc. and the Aladdin. “We’re going to carefully correct all the design errors” of the Aladdin, Mr. Earl said.

That is partly where Mr. Gluck comes in. Mr. Gluck, 75 years old, sold Caesars World to the former ITT Corp. in 1995. He was the first casino operator to bring retail stores to Las Vegas casinos when he opened the Forum Shops in 1992. The Forum Shops mall, which has the highest sales per square foot of any U.S. shopping center, brought on a wave of retail development in Las Vegas casinos, including Desert Passage and the Venetian casino’s Grand Canal Shoppes.

The Planet Hollywood-Starwood group is hoping Mr. Gluck might work something similar with Desert Passage. But it isn’t yet precisely clear what Mr. Gluck’s role will be. “I’m going to help them put it together,” he said in an interview. “They want to take advantage of my experience in having done this before.”

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