The vacant 25-acre site once occupied by Castaways and Showboat went on the market at the beginning of August
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]merican casino operator Station Casinos is attempting to sell the vacant 25.5-acre site for $6.6m (E5.9m) more than a decade after purchasing the Castaways Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and then demolishing the property.
It is the second vacant plot in the valley that Las Vegas-based Station is trying to sell, although the price tags vary greatly.
Brokerage firm CBRE Group also are trying to sell Station’s 56.6-acre site at Las Vegas Boulevard and Cactus Avenue, some 6 miles south of the Strip, for $40m (E35.8m) or roughly $706,000 (E631,646) per acre. By comparison, the Castaways site is listed for around $259,000 (E231,738) per acre.
Opened in 1954 as The Showboat before being re-named in 2000, the 447-room Castaways had an 80,000-square-foot casino and a 106-lane bowling centre.
It went bankrupt in mid-2003 and was seized through foreclosure in early 2004, after which it was forced to close.
At the time the Las Vegas Sun reported that a group of local casino owners were discussing plans to buy the property and transform it into a Hispanic-focused entertainments centre.
However these proposals were pre-empted by Station Casinos after it paid $33.75m (E30m) for the defunct resort in the autumn of 2004 without announcing any future development plans.
The company began demolishing the Castaways in summer 2005 and imploded its 19-story hotel tower in early 2006.
