Fontainebleau brand has long ties between Las Vegas, Miami

In the fall of 1954, a newspaper columnist quipped that he had been invited to the upcoming premiere of the “trillion dollar” Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach.

Rooms at the new South Florida spot included a $262-a-day suite, he later wrote — or more than $2,700 today when adjusted for inflation.

“Meals are extra, of course,” the columnist noted.

Not long after, the now-iconic hotel also boasted a link to Las Vegas — a connection that, following a volatile run on the Strip, continues today.

Developer Jeffrey Soffer, owner of Fontainebleau Miami Beach, reacquired Las Vegas’ Fontainebleau a year ago, well over a decade after he originally broke ground on the towering hotel-casino only to see it go bankrupt after the economy crashed, change hands a couple of times and then get derailed by the pandemic, all before Soffer came back to finish what he started.

Construction is underway on the 67-story Fontainebleau Las Vegas, which is slated to open in late 2023 and feature 3,700-plus rooms.

Long before Soffer acquired Florida’s Fontainebleau in 2005 and unveiled plans that year for the one on Las Vegas Boulevard, a contractor named Morry Mason linked the swanky Miami Beach hotel to America’s gambling capital.

According to published accounts, Mason, owner of Taylor International Corp., built numerous hotels in South Florida, including the Fontainebleau.

He then ventured to Las Vegas and built the Riviera, which opened in 1955, and the Tropicana, which debuted in 1957, according to his grandson Jim Mason, president of Taylor International.

Morry Mason moved to Las Vegas in the mid-1960s, and his family construction business had a hand in several other well-known casino resorts on or near the Strip.

Among other projects, the firm built Caesars Palace, the former International (now Westgate Las Vegas) and the original MGM Grand (now Bally’s), Jim Mason told me.

More recently, the company acted as owners’ representatives for the Hard Rock Hotel’s conversion to Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, he said. Virgin opened last March following the hotel’s roughly $200 million overhaul.

Taylor International also worked as caretakers at the Fontainebleau under billionaire owner Carl Icahn, who acquired the project in 2010 for around $150 million and left it largely untouched until he sold it in 2017 for $600 million to developer Steve Witkoff, Jim Mason said.

Jim Mason, who owns Taylor International with his brother, Bill, said they ensured the Fontainebleau’s central plant was operational and that systems such as fire sprinklers and generators were still working.

“There’s a lot of moving parts, even when it’s not occupied,” he said, noting the firm also took care of the property for a period under Witkoff.

Towering over the north Strip, the Fontainebleau was for years a glaring reminder of Las Vegas’ wild real estate boom and devastating crash. It stood there, unfinished, as the economy regained its footing from the Great Recession and as other stalled projects around the valley were completed.

More recently, it was also a sign of the pandemic’s early spillover effects.

Witkoff, who had set out to open Drew Las Vegas, as he called the project, in 2022, halted construction in the early chaos of the outbreak when much of the economy, including Nevada’s casinos, rapidly shut down.

Plenty of work remains on the Fontainebleau. But with a crane now in the air, an “fb” logo near the top of the tower, work trucks on site and other visible signs of construction, the long-unfinished skyscraper is, yet again, on a path to opening.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.