[kenratboy]

http://news.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070407/BIZ04/704070340/1071/BIZ

"The Sparks Planning Commission voted unanimously Thursday night to approve a special-use permit to Las Vegas-based Olympia Gaming to build a nonrestricted casino and 1,000-room hotel on the banks of the Sparks Marina.

The 14-acre casino site will be a part of RED Development's Legends at Sparks Marina project, a 1.35 million-square-foot retail complex that broke ground earlier this year.

The casino will feature a 50,000-square-foot casino and be 250 to 300 feet tall, officials for Olympia said.

The resort will cater to tourists with suites, five restaurants, a high-end spa, private beach, lakefront amphitheater with water show and a convention center.

Sparks City Council is expected to review the project May 7, though special-use permits are not generally reviewed by the council, because of the importance of the project, city officials said.

In addition, the casino will be reviewed by the Regional Planning Commission as a project of regional significance.

"We are very excited about the outcome last night," said D.C. Graham, Olympia chief marketing officer, Friday. "We do understand, though, that this is a process. We look forward to moving on to the city council."

Olympia, which owns Casino Fandango in Carson City, hopes to break ground on the hotel-casino in this year's fourth quarter."

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This project is already being built with a large Scheels (seems like an insignificant anchor, as Cableas is under construction, and Bass Pro Shop is coming soon) among other stuff, but now it looks like a large hotel/casino is good to go (have not heard of this part of the project until just now).

My only concern is unlike Vegas where a project like this would simply be put up without batting an eye, these sorts of projects seem to fizzle out after a few months - but I hope I am wrong! I am getting very sick of all the talk and serious lack of construction equipment!

Select 'The Legends at Sparks Marina' for the general overview (if ya care!):

http://www.reddevelopment.com/

[mdiederi]

Cool, my parants live not too far from there. I heard about this last year, one of my old bosses, Dean Harrold, is involved. Olympia is building another one down here in Vegas too. There's a tiny rendering of the Sparks project on this site (http://www.olympiagamingllc.com/projects.php).

[kenratboy]

Cool, thanks for that link!

While this forum is really about skyscrapers, and as much as I want a nice skyscraper in this project - I am really interested in the stuff I can actually use in terms of shopping and entertainment - and what it will do to the local economy.

[mdiederi]

That mall sounds like it will have tons of shopping if it pans out, the developer seems to have experience. Sparks doesn't really have a big mall, does it? How close will the resort be to Interstate 80? What kind of access will there be? Do you get off at McCarrren and then drive around the lake or do you use Sparks Blvd? Looking at the arial map on the RED site it looks like the resort will probably be on that land north of the mall, away from the freeway.

[brinvion]

What can i say but Awesome!!! This is just more sugar on the cookie. so we gotta wait for a month for the council to do what they are goinging to do,shame. They could break ground earlier and get this thing up sooner. Man! I am impatient. Ha!

[brinvion]

Here is best rendering I could find of the tower. looks ok.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v258/Brin2/legatsparksmara.jpg