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Welcome To Beautiful Resorts World Las Vegas

A picture postcard that says, simply, Welcome to Beautiful Resorts World Las Vegas in red and brown over a group of angularly frosted, chocolate hued hotel towers, the base of which is surrounded by a toadstoolerie of Asian pagodas bedecked to the baccarat 9's in Thai, Japanese, Indonesian and Chinese filigree.

What year is this?

While MGM Resorts International was proudly trumpeting the death of the themed casino resort AND Steve Wynn claimed loudly that the reelection of President Barack Obama would destroy any near-to-mid term chance of another megaresort being built on The Strip AND The Cosmopolitan trying to micromarket a bank owned casino to a niche sliver of non-gambling Top Chef viewers, Malaysia's Genting International had its ear to Las Vegas' arid substratum, intently not listening to any of them.

Buoyed by insane profits from their Singaporean casino (Resorts World Sentosa) and nascent racino at the Big A (Resorts World New York City) Genting International quietly set its sights on the Las Vegas Strip, specifically acquiring the partially abandoned shell of Echelon, previously home to the legendary Stardust.

Above: as if you were hovering over Encore. Below: the view from the top of Fontainebleau (sorta)

Laboring in secrecy for nine months with architect Paul Steelman Partners LLP while hammering out the details of the deal with Boyd Gaming, Genting has taken the partially built footprint of the Echelon project and draped upon it downright zany smorgasbord of pan Asian design filigree ranging from strictly traditional pagodas to dragon scaled mahogany towers.

Steelman appears to be enforcing the traditional Asian architecture rules of symmetrical design on an existing site plan that, while balanced, isn't symmetrical.

At street level, sea of red roofed pagodas is mirrored on either side of three fountains at the east Strip entry, with one exception being the south east corner's main pagoda entrance is cattywompus to the south east corner entrance. The replica Great Wall of China, which symmetrically encircles the resort and creates an equatorial axis of the property. It also makes the sea of pagodas feel like commoners villages just outside of the walls of the city.

Another sea of pagodas exist on the northern end or the property, surrounding what will eventually become an entertainment complex (a theatre containing Enter The Dragon, On Ice! and possibly a panda habitat), upon which the former Westward, Ho! served trillions of Megadogs. This mini-complex is certainly "Linq-ish" - a pedestrian mall leading to an entertainment center - and will probably be part of a second (or later) phase of construction.

Water is a very important part of this property. There are many fountains and low level reflecting pools within the pagoda village (marked with green arrows.) Surrounding the water park at the base of the hotel towers are an assortment of micropools (trend alert) each of which might have a specific offering: booze, oontz, kids, boobs, laps, games, seniors, night swim, etcetera.

One of the major design motifs on the building exteriors is a play on the interlocking circles and squares pattern which represented Chinese democracy aristocracy.

The promenade level features a large semi-transparent scallop shell shaped gazebo under which is a water park. Resorts World Las Vegas is intended to be a family resort. This view also gives a stellar look at the three south towers, whose roofs collectively appear to be part of a Hot Wheels stunt derby. The illusion here is that these towers used to be "one tower" that tectonically split apart and spread horizontally and vertically. Fascinating. Also interesting is the abstracted dragon profile which splits the towers into zig zagged halves, each of which has a different grade of reflective polish on the exterior glass. Clever.

Each of the trio of south towers have their own porte cochere entrances. I think I see a Fat Tuesday just the east tower.

Walking north on the Strip, just outside of Sinatra, this is what you'll see during the day.

And during the day.... The arch entrance look so Thai, I'm starting to get hungry.

Look at the detailed textures on these buildings. What exactly are those giant fins made of? Metallic grate with lit edges, suspended outside of the curtain wall?

And the divots on the far corner of the front tower... are those terraces?

And what about that towers in the back? It looks like an unbuttoned shirt with a...

...banana shaped trebuchet rising from the collar, ready to catapult a turd coated Megadog at Steve Wynn. (???) This design feature probably "means" something, but I have no idea what it could be. A Japanese arch? Asian architecture experts, please chime in.

These two towers in the back are reminiscent of the original CityCenter renderings wherein residential towers were stuffed in the back like pawns attacking the freeway, far far far away from the hubbub of The Strip. These two towers stand on either side of what is probably the Convention Center, giving the property layout symmetry around and through the asymmetrical Echelon site plan.

There's the other poop cannon tower.

Resorts World Las Vegas reminds me of everything I loved about Las Vegas wherein every building was strangely familiar yet thoroughly strange, balancing the fine line between enthrall and eye roll. Resorts World Las Vegas is more Excalibur than Excalibur, more Mandalay than Mandalay Bay and more of a Mirage than The Mirage. It truly is over the top, supremely tacky and butt-fucking-ugly-awesome, just like Las Vegas used to be before Bellagio fucked everything up. The fact that Resorts World Las Vegas looks like the bastard child of Imperial Palace, CityCenter and Wynn/Encore, a gesture I perceive as being a gigantic middle finger at the three most vocal operators in town, makes me love it even more.

In the present previous to this one, a post card of the future arrived detailing a future past wherein a tangle of Asian languages spoken, neo-modern ancientist garments are draped on a partially resurrected, post-Capitalist, decaying post-American skeleton. The story it tells is partly about the prequel that never got made, but mostly about how after the hardest of winters, the deepest of scourge and the muddiest muddled mess the winds of change will sow the seeds on fallowed, once hallowed, ground where they will take root and grow anew.

Resorts World Las Vegas is a breath of fresh, slightly foul, familiar air. Blame the dog, everybody does.

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