Rio Hotel’s new owner wants skybridge to connect Las Vegas Strip to redeveloped “neighborhood” west of freeway

Ryan Matthey
·2 min read
6

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — As Rio Hotel & Casino’s new owner attempts to bring vibrance back to the neon resort through a $340 million revamp, he also wants to bridge the gap between them and the Las Vegas Strip, literally.

Currently, to get between the Rio Hotel and the heart of Nevada’s tourist hot spot, you need to take a 10-minute walk on a broken sidewalk along the I-15 freeway overpass.

Eric Birnbaum, CEO of Dreamscape, the company that purchased the Rio Hotel in 2019 for $516.3 million, said he wants to make that commute a direct shot to his hotel.

That direct shot, he envisions, would be a landscaped pedestrian bridge that stretches from The Rio, over I-15, to Caesars Palace. He’s pulled inspiration from the 1.45-mile-long elevated High Line in New York City, built on top of a former railway.

“We are very much in the middle of those conversations with all the county commissioners, with a lot of different constituents,” Birnbaum said inside The Rio Thursday afternoon. “This is an area that we think, you know, has a reason to exist and we want to market that.”

To the west of the freeway, he also envisions visitors approaching much else outside his resort: a redeveloped business “neighborhood.”

He points to the success of Fremont Street, miles away from the Las Vegas Strip, as to why a redesigned community – including The Rio, The Palms, and The Gold Coast hotels & casinos – would work within closer distance to Nevada’s main attraction. It would also be within blocks of other businesses, such as those in Chinatown.

“Why can’t the same thing happen west of the Strip here, and create a real neighborhood, and create a destination?” Birnbaum said. “I can’t get into all the details, but suffice to say we, along with some of our neighbors in this general area, would love to bring and revitalize this whole neighborhood.”

Though the concept has existed for at least a year, there is no timeline of when this project would see traction as receiving necessary approvals and the eventual construction would put it years in the future. Current renovations at The Rio are expected to wrap sometime in 2025.

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