Cosmopolitan Las Vegas Just Can Never Catch A Break

Andrew Calvo | April 24, 2009 | 0 Comments

If the Cosmopolitan Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas was a cat, it’d probably have used all of its 9 lives by now, if it were a human being, it’d be through one heck of a life before it even came out of the womb.

Ever since the beginning of 2008 anything that could happen to the Cosmo seems to have happened, and whenever it looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel, something else seems to pop up and cause more problems for the project and those who have placed deposits on it.

Now the latest screw in the cog is related to Starwood & Hilton’s lawsuit over the Denizen brand. Since the Denizen brand seems to be the hotel that is going into the Cosmopolitan, and according to the court order from earlier today all development on the Denizen brand and properties are to suspended for at least 90 days. Bad news for the developers, bad news for the deposit holders and just bad news for Las Vegas as well – another Strip property whose future is in doubt.

What really interests me though is the connection between Ross Klein, Amar Lavlani and the sudden switch from the Cosmopolitan being a W/St Regis to a Hilton property:

Last year there was a WSJ article which said that a deal between was essentially completed between W Hotels/Starwood & the developers of the Cosmopolitan which called for one of the Cosmo towers to be a St Regis, and one of the towers to be a W Hotel. A deal like this made complete sense – Starwood was looking for a way to get their W hotel brand launched in Las Vegas, and it was a great way to also bring the St Regis brand to Las Vegas since the Cosmopolitan was going to be made up of two towers – one which could be branded as one hotel, one branded as the other.

A few months after that story came out, Ross Klein & Amar Lavlani resigned from Starwood and took new positions at Hilton; from that point on any word of W/St Regis going into the Cosmopolitan all but stopped.

Earlier this year there was a surprise announcement that Hilton, and not Starwood would be taking over the management and branding of the Cosmopolitan Resort, including a complete redesign of the interiors, shortly afterwards Hilton announced their Denizen brand, and it was assumed and reported that the Cosmopolitan was going to be one of the first Denizens, although nothing official was reported by either Hilton or the Cosmo’s developers.

In the lawsuit Starwood filed against Hilton, Starwood alleges that Hilton/Klein/Lavlani took confidential documents which had information on how Starwood structured new property deals and used that to go to Starwood’s developers to “steal” the property so that it could be opened as a Hilton branded property..

Hmm.. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Who knows what will happen to the property now – will it have to go through another complete design process? Will W Hotels end up opening there anyway?

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