Old Motel 8 To Be Transformed Into Newest Las Vegas Strip Casino

The south end of the Las Vegas Strip is home to an old, dumpy Motel 8, sitting across the street from Mandalay Bay and Luxor. By 2022, however, it’s possible that the dilapidated structure will be transformed into the area’s newest hotel-casino property.

Asher Gabay, an Israeli hotel mogul, bought the Motel 8 property last year and is planning to turn it into Astral, a 34-story, 620-room hotel and casino.

Gabay hopes to break ground on the project next spring and plans to complete it by the end of 2022. By his own estimation, the project will cost between $325 million and $350 million. Gabay bought Motel 8 last July for just $7.4 million. The entrepreneur has plenty of experience in the space, already owning and operating several properties in Eilat, a city in southern Israel.

The south end of Las Vegas Boulevard is empty compared to the center strip between MGM and Venetian. Once south of MGM, the east side of the street doesn’t have a single casino property and is instead lined with old or vacant commercial buildings. The Motel 8, for example, was built in the 1960s.

The north end of the Strip is on the verge of unveiling a pair of new hotel-casino properties in 2020 with the opening of Resorts World and The Drew just north of the Wynn and Encore.

The Lucky Dragon, an Asian-themed casino located near the north end of the Strip that opened in 2016, underwent foreclosure just two years later.

Astral would be the first new south Strip property since Mandalay Bay was built in 1998. Gabay’s plan for the addition could be coming at the perfect time with the NFL’s Oakland Raiders set to move to Las Vegas next season. Their future home, Las Vegas Stadium, is being constructed just east of Mandalay Bay and about a mile away from the site of the future property.

With the addition of T-Mobile Arena and the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, the area surrounding the arena has seen much heavier foot traffic and has undergone some major renovations, including the Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino being renovated and rebranded as The Park.

*Photo courtesy of Astral

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