Rebuilding the Lady Luck

Really?

I went to the Lady Luck once. After a having a good time on Fremont Street, I'm a bit hazy on the fine points, but mostly I remember the place was smoky. 

One of the sites I check pretty regularly is Vegaschatter.  It's a great site.  Today there was an article about the old Lady Luck, which was recently rebranded the Downtown Grand.  Personally, I think Lady Luck is a way better name, but so it goes.  The article talks about how the place is being refurbished, and offers some speculation as to when it might open up again.

I'm sorry, but I just don't believe it. 

The Lady Luck closed for renovations in 2006.  It hasn't opened the doors since.  Anyone who has been downtown has seen it, it's big, white, and takes up a whole lot of space between the Fremont Street Experience and the new Mob Museum.  Whenever I'm downtown, I walk by the place just to see what's happening.  I've never seen much.  While work has certainly taken place on Third Street in front of the old hotel, I've never seen any real action at the hotel itself.  I haven't been there in a year, of course, so my observations are dated, but if the owners really are gearing up for an opening, they are certainly taking their own sweet time.

Maybe this wouldn't bother me so much if the owners didn't keep saying they were working on it.  People understand why the Echelon and the Fontainebleau were mothballed, people get that the money doesn't add up to reopen the place.  But these guys just keep throwing out plans, artists renditions, and pretend re-opening dates (vegaschatter sites five different dates).  Ex-Mayor Oscar Goodman has called the place a "blight", a "rotting corpse", a "disaster" and a "carcass"  Through it all, the owners, Third Street Gaming,  have kept talking about renovations, reopenings, rebrandings, and all the great things that were coming.

And yet the place still sits. Empty.  Hulking.  Just plane ugly. 

I hope I'm wrong.  When I go in July, I'll again walk down to the old Lady Luck.  I'll look for trucks, cranes, some signs of life.  Then maybe I'll believe.

Maybe.