Charlie Palmer's Vegas Hotel

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed)
Jun 26th 2006 at 2:02PM

Chef Charlie Palmer already owns a hotel in Healdsburg, a city in the northern California wine country, but he is planning to take his celebrity chef status to a new level in Las Vegas by opening a hotel/condo complex that will bear his name. This venture is a step apart from other chefs, who have contented themselves with lending their names (and occasionally their actual cooking) to restaurants in hotel-casinos up to this point. Palmer's project will be built on the site of the casino known as the "Golden Palm." Instead of the 6-story building that now sits there, Palmer's complex will be 33-stories high, have 400 hotel/condo units and three restaurants on site, including a sushi bar. In total, construction should cost $400 million and Palmers expects it to be completed by 2008.

Palmer's new digs will not have a casino on the premises, but with one celebrity chef carving a new and glamorous niche in Vegas, how long can it be before other chefs follow suit and expand upon the idea? Ducasse Towers? Emeril's Kicked Up Casino?

Tags: casino, celebrity chefs, charlie palmer, chef, hotel, las vegas