Exhibition hall will be ready Dec. 14
With CES trade show cancellation, no rush to finish ahead of time
The new Las Vegas Convention Center exhibition hall will be ready for people by Dec. 14.
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Steve Hill said Tuesday there wouldn’t be any financial advantage to extending the occupancy date, even though the building’s first tenant, CES, opted to cancel its Las Vegas technology trade show and instead have an online version.
“At times, the last couple of weeks (of a project’s completion) can be a mad dash to the finish line,” Hill said. “You put extra resources into things like overtime in order to be done by a specific date. We won’t have the need to do that, so we won’t expend extra resources in order to make that Dec. 14 date.”
Contractors were facing pressure to complete the $980.3 million West Hall expansion in time for a movein by CES vendors. For CES, the consumer electronics trade show that annually draws more than 175,000 people to Las Vegas, mobilizing to build booths and move in equipment generally begins in early December for the show that usually starts the first week in January.
But this year, that’s changing. On July 28, the Consumer Technology Association, operators of CES, announced that the Jan. 6-9 in-person show would be canceled and that everything else would go online.
Hill said his top executives and representatives of the Turner-martin Harris Joint Venture contracted to build the expansion consulted to see if there would be any financial advantage to delaying completion.
There isn’t.
the new place because it’s being configured by WHL Design Group in keeping with COVID-19 guidelines. It will have 77 seats, compared with about 40 in the original Served.
“Mine and other restaurants that are being designed at this time can be designed around these restrictions, and then hopefully when the restrictions are lifted, they can go back to full capacity,” he said.
And he sees another plus.
“Being designed around those restrictions is going to make people more comfortable,” Meyer said.
The new restaurant — he’s shooting for an opening date of about
Oct. 15 — will have a sleek design in soft neutrals. It’ll have a bar area with full alcohol service, a raw bar
and private dining rooms, where he plans to have live entertainment on weekends and during Sunday brunch.
The dinner menu will include such dishes as a short rib grilled cheese with fermented mushrooms, redwine-braised goat and a veggie Wellington. Brunch dishes will be the likes of a dozen Benedicts including duck (with or without foie gras or duck pate), Green Eggs & Spam and a Salvadoran breakfast of two cheese pupusas, braised beef barbacoa, curtido cabbage slaw and a sunnyside-up egg.
But one vestige of the Asian restaurant will remain: the teppan tables. Meyer intends to use them for a sort of chef’s table feature during brunch and dinner. He plans to sell seats at the tables for a prix fixe menu of four to six courses, which will be available a la carte in the rest of the restaurant.
“It’ll be a full, interactive chef cooking experience,” he said. “No onion volcanoes; none of that stuff. Really nice, high-end, intricate presentations.”
A sample menu lists the grilled cheese plus seared foie gras with rice pancake and kimchi, pork belly and polenta, a seared scallop taco and seared sweet potato and mushroom cannelloni.
And Meyer plans to bring in outside talent.
“I’m reaching out to people who really want to put out interesting food,” Meyer said. “I want it to be a breeding ground for culinary talent. It’s just about putting out really cool, interesting food.”