The Plaza is a true Vegas icon, with its flashy, instantly identifiable porte cochere and gleaming hotel tower immortalized in movies, music videos and other pop culture moments. This year marks the Downtown casino-resort’s 50th anniversary, and while special events and promotions for guests are in the works (or currently available at plazahotelcasino.com/50-years-room-offer), there are other exciting developments on the way.
The Greyhound bus station’s 50-year lease on the space adjacent to the Plaza’s parking facility runs out soon. (The station closed February 23, in preparation for a move to the RTC South Strip Transfer Terminal.) It’s a big deal for several reasons, perhaps most notably because it opens up further Downtown growth while connecting to the City of Las Vegas’ planned pedestrian bridge, from the Symphony Park area to Main Street.
Plaza CEO Jonathan Jossel recently brought us up to speed on the intriguing present and exciting future of a Las Vegas landmark.
How would you characterize the overall vibe Downtown as Las Vegas seems to be emerging from the worst part of the pandemic? There was definitely a period in December and early January that felt like, uh-oh, how does this come back? But in the last 30 days, you can see a shift. People obviously want to get out—they’ve had enough of watching Netflix and ordering UberEats—and the vaccine helps all of that. When you talk about the hotels Downtown … there’s a much better energy, it’s busier, people are more relaxed, and that doom and gloom feels like it’s behind us. I think this will be not just be a comeback, but a great comeback in the next six months.
The Greyhound bus station on the Plaza property closed last month. How big of a difference will that make for the property and that area of Downtown in general, and what are you planning for that space? A lot of people are asking what is coming next, and it doesn’t actually matter what comes next. The goal was just them leaving. It’s addition by subtraction. Nothing against Greyhound, but they’ve been here 50 years. They had a great purpose back then, but for Downtown and where it’s evolved, that’s a central piece coming through Main Street. It has become a strategic focal point with the 800-unit residential project being built just to the west. And it not only frees up future development, it gives Downtown a different image and perception. Two things that have always been a challenge are safety and parking, and this cures both.
What can you say about specific plans for that part of the property? We’ve got a few things on the table we’re looking at, and there are two concepts I particularly like … [but] we’re open to ideas and not ruling out anything. We’re not going to decide what to do for another six months, because technically, [Greyhound] still has the space until the end of July. But the two options are both entertainment-based projects and very complementary to the Plaza and the other buildings Downtown, and also could be great for people that live Downtown. And when I say entertainment, I’m not necessarily talking about music or live entertainment. Everything is on the table.
On the other side of Fremont, you have a shiny new neighbor. How has Circa changed Downtown so far? Well, remember that we sold them that location, the [Las] Vegas Club, with the knowledge this was coming. We knew it would be a nice, shiny new hotel and it has already attracted a lot of people to Downtown to come see it. It’s hard to judge on the first five months—there are a lot of large-scale events on the pool deck and at the sportsbook they haven’t been able to do properly, so I’m excited to see the full effects of that. But it’s a great place, and it will certainly bring wider groups of people down here.
What other developments have you been working on at the Plaza? In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to announce two new bars we’re doing at the hotel [that] I think are really important. We’ve done a great job remodeling our convention space [and] our bingo space. We’ve added the outdoor arena and remodeled our hotel rooms. Now we want to tie all those things together.
After Oscar’s closes, we don’t have a venue for [nightlife], so getting some later-in-the-night entertainment is a bigger focus for us—not a nightclub, just different outlets to entertain customers. We are the second-biggest hotel Downtown, but we’re the biggest in terms of footprint, and the Plaza deserves to be well-known and recognized. That’s why we’ve done the murals on the side of building—to create that awareness.
There’s nothing like a monumental anniversary to bring some more awareness to a classic Vegas property. We are turning 50 this year, and we’ve been working to maintain that classic history of Las Vegas everybody loves and making it more modern for today’s world. The actual anniversary is July 2, and we had planned an event with some great local music and fireworks for July 4, but obviously with the pandemic we haven’t been able to confirm. We’re waiting on a bit more clarity on that, but this anniversary deserves to be recognized, and we’re going to find a way to do that.
