Neon Dice

On Monday the worst kept secret of the past few months became a reality.  Caesars Entertainment, who had been floating the names Hotel 3535 and The Quad to survey participants, finally announced that the Imperial Palace would officially become The Quad in December as part of the Linq project.  Caesars has been licensing the Imperial Palace name from Boyd Entertainment and wanted a refreshed image for the property to go with the Linq corridor

Accompanying the announcement was also an updated picture of what the resort will look like (below).  While the strip frontage will look a lot different, the hotel towers look almost unchanged.  Granted the blue Imperial Palace name will be replaced with a red The Quad sign, complete with Q logo, but the rest looks exactly the same as it did today.  This does not bode well for Linq on the whole.

Rather than do the remodel right and close the property completely to gut and re-skin, they will leave it open and pinch pennies on the remodel.  This means that while the rooms will probably get new carpet and furniture, the bathrooms will probably get minimal upgrades.  Hopefully they have budgeted to power wash the exterior as last time I stayed there my balcony was vile.

If the rest of Linq is completed on the cheap, as Caesars is known to do, then all it will end up being is a mall with way too much publicity.  With Caesars Entertainment’s debt situation, one has to wonder what this means for the High Roller Observation Wheel.  The opening for that has been rumored to be pushed back to Spring 2014.  The news for Linq since construction started hasn’t been encouraging, and  The Quad sets a bad precedent for the project as a whole.