Las Vegas was a ground zero for the Great Recession post-2008, and like every moment at the end of one economic era, the failures still mark the excesses of that time.
.
.
The symbol of the last boom has to be, as it usually is, the tallest building: the $2.9-billion Fontainebleau on which construction stopped in 2009 at 70 percent completion, prior to bankruptcy.
.
Across the Boulevard from the Fontainebleau is Echelon Place – an unfinished hotel, casino, shopping and convention complex on which construction was suspended on August 1, 2008.
.
Construction is expected to resume on these projects, and other parts of the Las Vegas Strip made it through the collapse. Nonetheless, Las Vegas is still littered with the detritus.
.
Vegas is not unique in this cycle, where an overreaching, speculative era is marked by the bankruptcy of the firm that built the tallest building at the time, usually opened at exactly the wrong moment.
In Vancouver, it was the Dominion Building in 1910, the Marine Building in 1930, and Park Place in 1984.
.
For more on Las Vegas, check out the current issue of Price Tags here.
