Real estate mogul Steven Witkoff is pushing back the opening of a $3.1 billion resort on the Las Vegas Strip by more than a year, slowing efforts to complete a partly built casino that was abandoned during the financial crisis a decade ago, Bloomberg News reported. The Drew Las Vegas, as the project is called, will open in the second quarter of 2022, Witkoff said. The project was originally scheduled to debut late next year. By delaying, Witkoff will have more certainty about his construction budget, he said. Witkoff bought the unfinished Fontainebleau resort from billionaire investor Carl Icahn for $600 million two years ago. The 3,780-room resort will feature a giant pool, with restaurants and shops adjacent. While many Las Vegas operators have remodeled or renamed their hotels, a major new resort hasn’t opened since the Cosmopolitan Las Vegas in 2010. The previous developer of the Drew site, Miami’s Jeffrey Soffer, spent $2.8 billion before putting the project into bankruptcy.
