Circus Circus Enters Mega-Resort Race

Circus Circus Enterprises on Thursday unveiled plans for a $270-million, 2,500-room hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip--the third major resort announced for the city in the last month.

The still-unnamed hotel--the third and most upscale of Circus Circus’ Las Vegas properties--will be in the form of a 30-story pyramid sheathed in bronze reflective glass.

It will be located on a 47-acre parcel next to Circus Circus’ 4,000-room Excalibur. The sister hotels will be connected by a 1/4-mile-long monorail.

Like any major resort in Las Vegas, it will have a huge casino--90,000 square feet. But in keeping with the city’s other recent mega-resorts--both completed and announced--the Circus Circus will have a theme-park aspect, with “a series of participatory, high-impact adventures involving cutting-edge movie technology,” according to the company’s announcement.

The new resort, which Circus Circus officials refer to only as “Project X,” is designed to compete with two other extravagant projects unveiled last month: the $1-billion, 5,000-room MGM Grand theme park to be built by billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, and the $300-million, 3,000-room Treasure Island resort that Mirage Resorts Inc. plans to locate next to its Mirage hotel/casino.

Is there room in the market for all that?

“Of course,” Circus Circus President Glenn Schaeffer said Thursday. “We just absorbed 13,000 (new) rooms during a war and a recession. In the next go-round, we expect the economy to be better.”

Circus Circus, which also owns the Circus Circus hotel/casino in Las Vegas and four other Nevada resorts, said it will pay for the project entirely from internal cash flow. Because it doesn’t have to line up outside financing, Circus Circus says it will open ahead of its rivals, in the fall of 1993.

Circus Circus stock, which has been falling in recent weeks from a 1991 high of $41, lost 50 cents Thursday to close at $34.125 in New York Stock Exchange trading. Mirage, also pushed lower since its new-casino announcement, slipped 25 cents to $24.875.