Heart-Shaped Resort Approved for Failed Ferris Wheel Site

Developer Eli Applebaum, working through Kulik River Capital, bought the site in spring 2026 for $70 million from a group that had acquired it out of bankruptcy. The plan commissioners signed off on is a 29-story tower with a heart-shaped facade wrapped in a full-height LED display, 752 hotel rooms, more than 42,000 square feet of convention space, a gaming floor, restaurants, retail, a pool deck and a covered pedestrian plaza similar in spirit to the Fremont Street Experience downtown.

The project was originally pitched at 874 rooms before the design got cut by roughly 60 feet to clear FAA height requirements this close to the airport flight path. One detail that will get attention from anyone who remembers the old SkyVue: the leftover concrete support towers are being reinforced and folded into the new building as the base for a restaurant suspended 265 feet in the air.

SkyVue's collapse is old news to anyone who has driven that stretch of the Strip near Russell Road in the last ten years. What started as a splashy 2011 announcement turned into two abandoned columns that outlasted multiple ownership changes and a trip through bankruptcy court before Applebaum picked up the land this spring. A land-use consultant working the file summed up the mood around the project bluntly, saying people in that corner of the Strip just want something to happen there after so many years of nothing.

That context is part of why this approval reads as a bigger story than a routine zoning vote. A prominent, empty eyesore across from one of the busiest resorts on the south Strip is finally getting replaced with an actual building, not another renderings-only announcement.

There is nothing to book. No construction start date has been set, and a project this size, with gaming licensing, financing and full permitting still ahead of it, is realistically years from opening. Clark County approval is a real milestone, but it is the beginning of the process, not the end.

For now, this is a story worth filing away rather than planning around. If you are staying at Mandalay Bay or anywhere near the south end of the Strip in the next few years, keep an eye on that lot. The pillars of sadness are finally getting put to use.