25 Comments
Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
StumbleDeutsche Bank AG’s Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino complex in Las Vegas, already the most expensive debacle in the city for a single lender, is now two years behind schedule, $2 billion over budget and under water -- literally, according to Bloomberg News. Deutsche Bank, the resort’s owner since it foreclosed on developer Ian Bruce Eichner last year, requires 24-hour pumps and containment walls after workers hit an aquifer below the Nevada desert floor. It’s another challenge for a project whose delays and redesigns have sparked lawsuits from condominium buyers and sales agents amid record declines in Las Vegas’s gambling revenue, home prices and hotel-room bookings.
Deutsche Bank drowning in Vegas on Cosmopolitan
(via Bloomberg News) · November 16, 2009 · 7:39 AM
Discussion: 25 comments so far...
Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy. Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their Las Vegas Sun account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.
Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.
Post a comment
Most Popular
- Viewed
- Discussed
- E-mailed
- Chinese company agrees to finance proposed Henderson arena
- South Point owner Michael Gaughan’s take on ‘Vegas Stripped’: ‘I’ll give it an 8’
- Coolican: Henderson officials out of loop on police brutality case, raising red flags
- See mug shots of 16 arrested in stolen-property police sting
- Lumberjacks — ‘Where the Big Boys Eat’ — hiring for North Las Vegas location
- Berkley draws stark contrasts with Heller over immigration
- Conceptual design unveiled for Henderson Space and Science Center
- Rebels open as a 9.5-point favorite against No. 13 San Diego State
- Send your loved one a virtual Vegas Valentine’s Day card right now
- Short memories may serve president
Blogs
The Kats Report
Live color from the scene at Thomas & Mack Center: We have a wire job! Rebels win, and Louie Armstrong sings!
South Point owner Michael Gaughan's take on 'Vegas Stripped': 'I'll give it an 8' (3 Comments)
Author relishes writing the life story of ‘larger-than-life’ Oscar Goodman (3 Comments)
Elsewhere
Landowner: All roads could lead to Uxbridge casino
Revel reveals smoke-free casino opening
Cirque du Soleil show in Sands China casino to close this month
Meet the woman behind Sheldon Adelson
The Sun
Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
Will this be a TiTanic literally?
can we have the water
There will be a race between Fontainebleu and the Cosmopolitan for the biggest Union built debacle in Vegas history. My money's on the F-What do you think, Steve Ross?
Talk about a money pit. There it is.
Unions did it.
There is no trade job that should pay more than $8 an hour unless it also requires a college degree.
Sounds to me like this project is a train wreck and they need to find a company that specilizes in derailment clean up.
If you don't like water, stay out of the Palazzo parking garage; they estimate if their pumps stopped the garage floors would be flooded in 18 minutes! Don't forget the water shortage in southern Nevada is a figment of Pat Mulroy's imagination!
Another Union debacle--all they know how to to is provide overpaid,incompetent dumbass laborers who masquerde as professionals
Taking money is one thing but at least do the Fu....g JOB!!!
the unions took out the loans?? Harry Reid will save the day on this too.
tear it down and start over
Put the people to work - build a pipeline and redirect the water to US here in LV and Not MEXICO !
@rejco100,
Right, those are the comments Germans want to hear. GERMAN taxpayers pay EUR 140B to cover losses from US Banks, get ZERO $ from the US, Deutsche Bank covers appr. EUR 7B in losses related to this on THEIRSELVE and you dare to ask where "your" money goes?
One question, what exactly you plan to do when Europe (the largest economy worldwide) decides to stop investing in US BS, Bush, Rumsfeld and the other republikan christian religious fanatics? Keep on watching Fox News? We have a saying over here, you shouldnt bite the hand that feeds you.... (not to mention the chinese)
Yours Sincerely (to all other Vegas lovers like)
Just another German Vegas regular....
These losses and delays couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of German bankers.
These are the same guys pulling the strings on the Stations Casinos bankruptcy, as lead lenders for three separate groups of creditors. Many smart people in town would rather have Boyd obtain control of Station Casinos rather than put up with Deutsche Bank as Station's principal owners, even with the Fertittas as their managers.
The Deutsche Bankers I've personally dealt with are the most stubborn, unreasonable, lawless bankers I met in 25 years of representing banks. They are so presumptuous, on one occasion, they even demanded that another bank, acting as a trustee, break the Internal Revenue Code in a way which would have had horrific consequences for the beneficiaries of that trust. When I kept saying "No", the Deutsche Bankers kept shreiking at me, over the speaker phone, until I finally said that I had enough of them and hung up.
That's how I negotiate with Germans. I'm still proud to say my father in law was part of the Canadian bombing crews who bombed civilian targets in German in World War II. I sure enjoyed telling these Deutsche Bankers that fact as part of our negotiation.
And, for those who have forgotten, it is well documented that Deutsche Bank was the banker to Nazi Germany, including financing the building of concentration camps, but none of Deutsche Bank's officers from that era were prosecuted at Nuremberg or elsewhere, and they just stayed in office to teach their banking methods to successive generations of bankers.
At Cosmopolitan, in addition to a mortgage, Deutsche Bank took an assignment of the purchase contracts for the condos at Cosmopolitan; the building was not completed anywhere near on time; and yet the most these German hogs are willing to do is return 75% of the buyers deposits on the "bad" condos. Buyers who put down deposits on the condos with good views get no refunds.
I know long time Nevadans are tired of reading me say this, but if Nevada's corrupt Legislature had adopted the laws in effect in California to protect condo buyers, all of these buyers would have 100% of their deposits back.
I sincerely wish Deutsche Bank all the best of luck on their troubled loans and foreclosure property in Las Vegas.
Bloomberg.com's story, linked by the Sun, says it was Deutsche Bank's bad luck to hit the high ground water table beneath the Cosmopolitan.
No it wasn't. It was very sloppy underwriting, uncharacteristic of careful German engineers who competent banks consult before making big real estate loans.
Everyone knows that there is an underground stream which runs under the Imperial Palace, just down the street from Cosmopolitan, and that the parking garage dangerously floods every time there is a big storm. If Deutsche Bank's own engineers had contacted MGM Mirage, they would have been told, as a matter of professional courtesy, what the ground water conditions were at Bellagio and City Center.
Any competent banker would have required its own thorough soils engineering report, with soil test borings, before the loan on Cosmopolitan was made. If test borings had been made, the existence of the high water table would have been discovered, and the bank would have made its decision accordingly.
It's entirely possible that Deutsche Banks' decision makers did receive a thorough soils report, with borings, and decided to take the risk of making the loan anyway. Now that their risk taking has bitten their hand, it's easier to simply say "bad luck" rather than "bad decision".
How is it the unions fault that they hit the water table? Doesnt that lie strictly on the engineers and architects of the job. Just to remind some of you above. The laborers are told where to dig, so they dig. It is not their job to determine where the water table is. They did the job. The higher ups failed. But of course its easier to blame the working man.
Just another non surprising story of demise coming out of Vegas these days.
It is certainly not the union workers' fault for hitting the water. Most of them can't find their way home. It's our fault for paying those stupid SOBs more than minimum wage. And the engineers fault for the water table fiasco. Lots of blame to go around, except for the union dummies. To be blamed for something, you must be competent in the first place. Like infants, union workers have no competency and therefore share no blame.
Who writes this stuff?
Somehow it's the fault of the Union craftsmen who built every other hotel, casino, high rise, and commercial buildings standing on the strip? I guess you hate the Union workers but how is blaming them logical?
If you have a job thank your god, good luck, and your hard work.
If your job offers any benefits, 40 hrs a week, two days off every week, Thanksgiving and Christmas off to be with family and friends you might thank Organized Labor.
Good Grief!! 2 YEARS behind schedule??
Thank you NVJJC, I don't really understand the anti union tone of some comments above, very harsh indeed. People have such short memories, especially when it comes to labor history. The other guy's grass always looks greener and plate more bountiful I guess.
NVJJC : I thank organized labor for pricing the film business OUT of California to places like Canada, and Mexico. I thank organized labor for pricing the auto industry practically out of existence. I thank organized labor for years of corruption in the Teamsters Union which was in bed with the mob, raided and robbed the pension fund of the trusting and hardworking truckers of America. I thank organized labor for criminal activities inside my old NABET local in Hollywood which drained and robbed me of my pension before being swallowed up by I.A. I could go on and on here if you like.. Oh yeah, we can thank organized labor for being directly responsible for the creation and need for the most poisonous destructive thing ever put to the United States workers, no other than NAFTA.
Lots of strip Hotels are all built on a shallow aquifer of blackish water. While it has no value, it is rechargeable water, and as long as its dumping in a wash heading to Lake Mead, and it is monitored, I believe the Hotels get credit for water. Maybe someone else can comment more on this. Frankly the 24 hour pumps are nothing new on the strip, you would think Bloomberg would of investigated more.
Here's a story about a union threatening an Eagle Scout for cleaning up a park:
http://www.mcall.com/news/all-a8_5scout....
"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," union thug Balzano told the council.
Typical union behavior. They should all be executed.
goingbust : I think your final analysis of your comment is way out of line. That being said however, we also can give these union goons the title of environmental terrorists as well as economic terrorists .
Trolling is a fine art, I am told. Sadly, I am the Sam Kinison of trolls. :(