The SLS Las Vegas is on course to adopt its previous moniker, after an event was held to announce that the property is to revert back to the Sahara name that it was known as from 1952 to 2011, reports the Las Vegas Sun.
Hosting a firework display and drone light show by the SLS pool area, the name change is to form part of a larger $150m renovation project during which “every detail” of the property is to be looked at.
Paul Hobson, SLS’s general manager, is adamant that the change is not an attempt by the company to restore past glories: “Sahara is such a recognisable name. I drive to work every morning on Sahara Avenue. It’s a name that’s embedded in the city and in the lore of the city, but we’re not looking back so much as looking forward.”
The idea of readopting Sahara came when ownership of the casino was taken up by businessman Alex Meruelo during the early stages of last year, as Hobson added: “It was one of the first conversations we had.
“We landed on Sahara as being a very appealing option. A lot of people speculated that it was going to be Grand Sahara Resort because that would match Mr Meruelo’s Grand Sierra Resort property in Reno. We just thought that Sahara, without any modifiers, was powerful.”
During the coming months the building is to still be known as SLS, with executives still ironing out the finer details of the renaming process of the resort.
Hobson concluded: “There’s a lot [of] pieces and parts that will have to be installed. 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. Once that’s done, we’ll start selling the property under the name Sahara.”
