Once that’s done, we’ll start selling the property under the name Sahara.” “We’ll have to, of course, badge the exterior, so we have a massive sign and light project coming that should be done sometime in September or October. “There’s a lot pieces and parts that will have to be installed,” Hobson told the Sun.
The name restoration is part of a $150 million renovation of the casino floor, hotel rooms, swimming pool and entertainment venues that hotel officials say could take up to three years. It reopened with more than 1,600 rooms in 2014 as the SLS. It closed as the Sahara in 2011 and its auto racing-themed restaurant and roller coaster were removed. It has three hotel towers and once was the tallest building on the Las Vegas Strip.
The 14-story hotel-casino sits on the boundary between the city of Las Vegas and the resort-lined tourist corridor, and survived while other aging icons like the Sands, Riviera, Stardust, Landmark and Desert Inn were razed to make way for new developments. The Sahara, which featured a Moroccan onion-dome minaret over its porte-cochere, was known as a hangout for the Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
