If you want to have a serious conversation about casino resort design and construction in Las Vegas and around the world, Paul Steelman is your guy. His Vegas-based international firm, Steelman Partners, has been one of the most prominent forces on the Strip for more than 30 years, a stretch that included collaboration with Steve Wynn on the Mirage.
Steelman’s latest contribution to the Las Vegas lexicon is his company’s work on Resorts World—interior design for the casino and VIP gaming area, the upscale Chinese restaurant Genting Palace and the Crockfords hotel, among other spaces.
During a preview tour before Resorts Worlds’ June opening, Steelman explained that his company had been developing the look and feel of the property for nine years before Genting Group publicly announced its plans for the former Stardust site.
A pool at Resorts World
“This is one of the biggest projects in Las Vegas ever,” Steelman says. “Steve Wynn would talk about it, because K.T. Lim [chairman of Genting Group] was very interested in [Wynn’s] review of the plans. And Steve Wynn would always say to me, ‘What K.T. is going to do over there, it might be better than what I do.’ And Steve’s pretty high on himself.”
Much has been made of the fact that Resorts World is the first brand-new, ground-up, major resort opening on the Strip since the Cosmopolitan debuted in 2010. It’s been a long time since a place this big arrived in Las Vegas, and that can make your first time exploring feel a little overwhelming.
There’s still a gigantic casino at the center of all the action, surrounded by fancy restaurants and bars. This is familiar. At one end, the sprawling Dawg House Saloon & Sports Book and the 5,000-seat Theatre at Resorts World (opening later this year) take up lots of space, and the other end of the property is anchored by a two-story retail district running parallel to the Strip. That’s where you’ll find more restaurants and the nightlife offerings from the Zouk Group, along with the 50-foot-tall, 20-million-pixel digital sphere that broadcasts different imagery and content around the clock.
Resorts World considers the sphere and the 100,000-square-foot LED screen on the hotel tower facing Las Vegas Boulevard as next-generation attractions, not unlike Bellagio’s fountains. But going big isn’t the underlying approach.
“K.T. Lim was emphatic about us breaking this hotel up into many different offerings for many different people, and I think that really stayed with the project from the very beginning,” Steelman says.
From the three different Hilton hotel brands at different levels of luxury to the expansive Famous Foods Street Eats food hall offering a range of cuisine via touchscreen, there are plenty of examples of that varied, layered approach to creating a modern hospitality experience. Great design is subtle and showcases the actual experience above the thoughtful details that come together to make it happen.
The 5.5-acre pool complex is one of the largest among Strip resorts, yet it doesn’t seem that big. There are nine different pools and five distinct areas all located on the fifth floor, including a 2,500-square-foot family pool area with playful water features and the exclusive VIP pool with a DJ booth and a 100-foot-long infinity pool looking south over the Strip. But the complex’s curved design and lush landscaping make each area feel like its own private oasis.
“You can’t see the whole thing at once. You can’t tell how big the place is, and it just keeps going,” says Andrew Kreft, director of design at Lifescapes International. “There are areas that really speak to the different moods guest might have, some where kids might be around and others more upscale.”
Like Steelman Partners, Lifescapes has worked on seemingly every major resort in town: Wynn, the Mirage, Bellagio, Venetian and Palazzo and more. The firm created natural environments all over Resorts World, including the porte-cocheres, Ayu Dayclub and the Villa Private Gardens at Crockfords. At the pool complex, Kreft and his team used more than 1,300 trees and palms, including dozens of plants that were preserved from the Stardust resort—imploded in 2007—to create the Bahamas-inspired landscape.
“It has a lot of sentimental value to us,” Kreft says of Resorts World. His company was also designing for Boyd Gaming’s Echelon project on this site before it was sold to Genting. “It feels like it’s your kid, and you want to make sure everything comes out right. It’s a vastly different project than it would have been with Echelon, but it needs to be for this day and age, and I think it really speaks to what everybody wants today.”
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