DEC 15: The Cosmopolitan Hotel

Las Vegas faces its deepest slide since the 1940s, declared a front-page New York Times headline in October. But don’t tell that to the folks at the COSMOPOLITAN, a new hotel opening December 15. To bolster the odds of success, CEO John Unwin has recruited some big names—New York art-world doyenne Yvonne Force Villareal’s Art Production Fund created an artist-in-residence program and has already shown videos by T.J. Wilcox and Yoko Ono on the 65-foot screen that fronts the hotel. Meanwhile, the list of chefs opening restaurants under the Cosmopolitan’s 52-story roof reads like a who’s who of contemporary American dining: the Bromberg brothers of New York’s Blue Ribbon; David Myers of Los Angeles’s Comme Ça; Scott Conant of Scarpetta; and José Andrés, whose Spanish restaurants are celebrated on both coasts. Clearly, buffalo wing–bingeing bachelor parties are not the target audience. Says Unwin, “I’m trying to create trips to Vegas that wouldn’t otherwise happen.”

Courtesy of the Cosmopolitan