Harrah's Creating Walking Restaurant Area Around Strip Casinos
Harrah's Entertainment spent years buying up a block of contiguous casinos on the east side of the Las Vegas Strip. Now that Imperial Palace has joined the fold over a year ago, the gaming operator will begin to exploit the advantage with plans to place a series of bars and restaurants open air alongside the casinos.
Harrah's owns Paris, Bally's, Bill's, the Flamingo, Imperial Palace, and its eponymous casinos, all next to each other on one side of the Strip. Harrah's also owns the Rio and Caesar's Palace.
Now they will add a winding chain of over two dozen restaurants and bars around and between the casinos, connecting with the monorail in the back and facing onto the Strip in the front. The plan is called "Project Link," and it would give Harrah's almost a complete little city, or a more diverse version of the haughty CityCenter that MGM Mirage is nearing completion on.
"Another casino didn't make a lot of sense," said the company's senior vice-president of resort development, Greg Miller. Instead, Harrah's will attempt to capture more of the flood of foot traffic forever parading past on the Strip, enticing them in with dining and drinking ambiance.
Tenant buildings will fill the back side of the project, reaching back a block to join the monorail.
Gaming analysts said the idea was certainly better than adding a new resort, saying investors are more concerned with reducing debt and recovering from the industry's liquidity crisis.
