Mandalay Execs Make Comeback at Fontainebleau
By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 7/25/2005
Las Vegas—Developers are planning yet another casino-hotel resort on the Las Vegas Strip, in part to feed into the city's booming convention business. While the hotel name is new to these parts, some of the names of the people involved will sound familiar to those in the exhibition industry.
Turnberry Associates, an Aventura, Fla.-based property development company, announced in mid-May it would build a Las Vegas version of Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hotel & Resort. Turnberry bought the resort, southern Florida's largest, for $165 million earlier this year, and said it would make $350 million in upgrades to the half-century-old property.
At the same time, Turnberry named Glenn Schaeffer president and CEO of Fontainebleau Resorts and charged him with overseeing both projects from an office in Las Vegas. Schaeffer had just left the Mandalay Resort Group, where he was president and CFO until this spring, when the company was bought by MGM Mirage for $7.9 billion. He reportedly has invested in the new company.
Danielle Babilino, former vice president of sales at Mandalay Bay, will take on a similar role at the new resort, overseeing convention sales, among other responsibilities. Another 30 or so former Mandalay Bay employees are expected to join her and Schaeffer.
Construction crews should break ground next year if the Fontainebleau Las Vegas is to open in 2008, as projected.
According to preliminary plans, the 4,000-room, $1.5 billion resort will be built on a 25-acre site next to the Riviera Hotel & Casino at the northern end of the Strip between Desert Inn Road and Sahara Avenue. The spot was once home to the Algiers and El Rancho hotels (both demolished) and the land is now owned by Turnberry.
The site is also adjacent to Turnberry Place, a four-tower condominium project going up just a half-block off the strip near the Las Vegas Convention Center.
John Marz, Fontainebleau's senior vice president of corporate marketing (another former member of Mandalay Bay's management team), said the new hotel probably would have about 350,000 square feet of exhibit and meeting space.
But, he noted, "We won't be heavy into exhibits. We were in that business at Mandalay Bay. Here, we want to be an adjunct to the convention center, because of our close proximity to it."
Marz added that the company plans to "do things differently in the business-to-business space" and that its strategy for group sales would be revealed as it takes shape.
Turnberry Associates, a private company with nearly $66 million in annual sales, has been busy lately in Las Vegas.
During the annual meeting of the Intl. Council of Shopping Centers at the LVCC in late May, Turnberry unveiled a partnership with Centra Properties to build a 1.2 million sq. ft. retail and entertainment project called Town Square Las Vegas at the south end of the Strip, near Mandalay Bay. Town Square is slated to include retail, dining, movie theaters, office space and a boutique hotel.
In addition, Turnberry's The Residences at MGM Grand is nearing completion. That project will add 40 stories of hotel and condominium units to the MGM Grand Resort Casino, which offers about 500,000 sq. ft. of convention and meeting space.
