(Suspense!) All we can say is there’s equipment in motion at 18 Fremont and that’s enough to get us excited about what’s to come. Derek Stevens and others involved in the project have been tight-lipped about specifics of the new resort, but Stevens has at various times hinted it’s likely to take downtown’s pool scene to a whole new level. 18+ New Customers only. New Casino On Fremont Street Min. 100% up to £300 Bonus + 30 bonus spins. Bonus spins on Starburst or Berryburst Max are subject to change & must be used within 3 days from activation. Bonus spins are activated after wagering a min. Circa, the new casino under construction on the Fremont Street Experience, plans to be an adults-only experience, open only to those 21 and older.When it opens its first five floors in late.

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© Louiie Victa Vegas Vickie, an iconic neon sign, originally lit up Fremont Street in 1980. The restored sign kicks again inside Circa.

The first new casino built from the ground up since 1980 makes its debut in Downtown Las Vegas. The 1.25 million-square-foot Circa revealed the first five floors of the swanky resort at midnight on October 28, with the largest sports book in the world, a year-round pool experience, four restaurants, and an adults-only experience, open only to those 21 and older. Owner Derek Stevens broke ground on the resort in February 2019, and plans to reveal the hotel rooms in December.

Visitors can park at Garage Mahal, an eight-story parking structure with 982 parking spaces across the street from Circa offering its own ride-share hub on the third floor. An art installation designed by Egads dubbed Time of Your Life chandelier spans 22 feet and greets drivers as they enter.

Visitors then cross an air-conditioned bridge to access the casino floor, which spans two floors. To the left of the garage entrance sits Jack Pots, a coffee shop created by Paul Saginaw and Steve Mangigian. Customers can find Michigan’s Zingerman’s coffee, along with a custom blend exclusive to Circa.

The 24-hour coffee shop offers a roster of breakfast favorites, sandwiches, and salads.

As visitors continue walking on the second level, they will encounter the 7,000-square-foot gaming floor to the right and a high-limit gaming area to the left. Aside from 49 table games and 1,350 slot machines, the casino floor features an HVAC systems in the to ventilate the casino.

On this floor, Le Thai chef and owner Dan Coughlin introduces 8 East, his pan-Asian restaurant with Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Thai dishes. A wall of 40 Maneki-neko waving cats, a Japanese symbol of good luck, stands outside the restaurant. The menu features small plates meant to share, a variety of skewers, and dishes served family style.

Saginaw’s Deli

Head to the right to find Saginaw’s Delicatessen, a 24-hour deli from Paul Saginaw with a seven-foot sculpture of the owner greeting customers at the front. The menu features reubens, matzo ball soup, onion rings, salads, latkes, chopped liver, breakfast specialties, and more.

“I’d tell you to order the corned beef Reuben, the king of sandwiches,” Saginaw says of what to come for. “It’s really the quintessential delicatessen sandwich. … It’s as good as a five-star meal.”

On the dessert side of the menu, Saginaw’s features favorites from his Ann Arbor, Michigan, original deli that opened 39 years ago. Traditional cheesecake, carrot cake, a Boston cream pie, sour cream coffee cake, and “a really great pecan pie that can make you cry” make the menu. The deli even serves a 99 cent shrimp cocktail from 3 to 5 a.m.

Those who want to head up to Stadium Swim with its six pools, two spas, 15,000 square feet of wet space, and 4,000-person capacity can queue up in the next space to the right.

Stadium Swim offers a 143-foot by 40-foot LED screen with 14 million megapixels at the entrance. Among the amenities, two swim-up bars, 30 cabanas, 38 daybeds, 337 chaise lounges, and food from Saginaw’s Deli and Victory Burger & Wing Co. Customers can order from iPads while continuing their sunbathing. At front of the venue, a bar featuring frozen cocktails awaits.

Customers access Stadium Swim via a three-story escalator, the longest in Nevada.

Back down on the second level, visitors will find boutiques with swimwear and resort attire, followed by an art gallery from Chris Ihle. A life-size replica of Stevens made from Lego blocks, Ihle’s medium, greets customers.

Next, Victory Burger & Wings Co. from the founding family of American Coney Island, the hot dog restaurant at the D Las Vegas, also owned by Stevens. Chris Sotiropolous and his sister Grace Keros created the sports-themed restaurant that has the Vegas Martini burger, an ode to the Michigan favorite olive burger. The menu also features jumbo wings, salads, and milkshakes mixed with breakfast cereals.

Overhead, the pendants are all in the color of a football, while the chairs take on the hue of a basketball. The cashier stand looks like a baseball dugout, and a scoreboard hangs from the ceiling.

The sports bar overlooks what Circa dubs the “world’s largest sportsbook,” a stadium-style betting extravaganza spanning three stories with room for 1,000. Every seat comes with a power outlet.

A 78 million-pixel screen anchors the sportsbook. Gamblers can sit in The Dugout, a VIP area with 28 seats in front of the screen; The Legends Club with 18 recliners behind The Dugout; The Champions Club with booth seating; The Circa Club Upper and Circa Club Lower with 14 booths; or the North and South Stands with tiered viewing and 164 seats. Victory Burger and the resort’s barbecue restaurant, Project BBQ, serve food for the experience.

Rounding out the second floor is Overhang Bar, an ode to a section of right field at Detroit Tigers Stadium open 24 hours daily.

Mega Bar at Circa

On the first floor sits Mega Bar, Nevada’s longest bar at 125 feet with 120 beer taps. Customers should look at the wallpaper, compiled of newspaper clippings. The 53-seat bar features 47 double-stacked televisions.

Out of all the bars at Circa, Vegas Vickie’s brings a truly Las Vegas experience, anchored by the original neon sign of Vegas Vickie, the kicking cowgirl. The 25-by-20-foot neon sign that sat outside Glitter Gulch originally debuted in 1980, and Stevens acquired it in 2016. YESCO, the neon sign company, spent seven months restoring the sign, complete with a repaired kicking leg.

The lounge features seasonal cocktails and vintage drinks with sheer drapes to offer some privacy. Artwork in the middle of the bar creates a V shape in honor of the stunning sign that visitors can see from the second floor down to the basement in a three-story atrium.

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Barry’s Downtown Prime

In the basement sits Barry’s Downtown Prime from Barry S. Dakake, a long-time Las Vegas chef who helmed N9NE Steakhouse and Scotch 80 Prime at the Palms. His regal steakhouse spans 3,200 square feet with eight rooms that can expand and contract to accommodate large groups to intimate settings. The restaurant serves table-side dishes along with a vegan menu and steakhouse favorites.

Dakake teams up with Yassine Lyoubi, Marco Cicione, and Donnie Rihn for this steakhouse filled with vintage glamour, including artwork from 40 artists adorning the walls. Navy and oxblood walls, warm brown and white oak parquet floors, walnut millwork throughout, burnished brass furnishings, and antique mirrors decorate the space. One room features an illuminated three-dimensional, rose-inspired ceiling while another comes with a lighted olive tree.

Outside the resort, on the Fremont Street Experience, sits Circa Bar with 24 frozen cocktail flavors and dancing flair bartenders. The bar top uses recycled Skyy vodka bottles.

Next door, Project BBQ, a permanent food truck serving Carolina barbecue dishes such as brisket, pulled pork, chicken, and the garbage bowl with a little of everything on top of kettle chips. Chef Rex Bernales partnered with Rob Baker, Mo Pierce, and Steve Hamlin on the restaurant near the Main Street Stage on the Fremont Street Experience.

Next up for Circa, the opening of the remainder of the resort, including 777 hotel rooms, with 512 opening on December 28. At the top of the resort, the Legacy Club on the 35th floor features a view of the city, five fire pits, and a 10-foot display of 1,000 ounces of gold.

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• New Resort Circa Reveals Four Restaurants Debuting in October in Downtown Las Vegas [ELV]

• Everything to Know About Downtown’s New Circa Resort Opening in October [ELV]

There were no fireworks, no gold-plated shovels, no mayoral Proclamations. There were none of the trappings of a Las Vegas resort groundbreaking, but it was, indeed, just that.

That tingling sensation you feel isn’t numbness resulting from sitting at a slot machine too long, it’s the excitement of knowing a long-awaited Las Vegas resort is finally in the works on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas. We’ve got all the exclusive scoop! Because having an “exclusive” is nearly as good as “having a life,” and that’s the story we’re sticking to.

Construction, or more accurately “deconstruction,” has quietly begun on a new hotel-casino from Derek and Greg Stevens, owners of Golden Gate and The D Las Vegas.

“What construction?” you ask. We’re trying to build some suspense here, just play along for once.

Owner Derek Stevens has said he’s attended more than 50 design meetings for the new downtown resort. While it doesn’t have a name yet, its placeholder name is “18 Fremont.”

A modest demolition project, not easily seen by pedestrians on Fremont Street, marks the beginning of a major (and expensive) construction project which will make the new resort a reality.

The demolition is happening behind two closed shops, Blowout and Forever Flawless. Demolition crews are making quick work of the structure.

Boom. Work on the next Las Vegas casino resort begins, sans hoopla, which would make a good band name.

Blowout and the Forever Flawless store (covering a tiny 0.08 acres) cost the Stevens brothers a steep $13.5 million. Millionaires be crazy, as the kids say, but there was a method behind the madness.

The shops were a critical element of a series of acquisitions allowing for 18 Fremont to encompass a full block, spanning a stretch of Fremont between Binion’s and the Plaza casino.

This is how the lot looked midday. Keep reading to see how it looked a couple of hours later. Suspenseful, right?

Mermaids and the Glitter Gulch strip club were also purchased by the Stevens brothers, along with La Bayou, currently site of an expansion of the Golden Gate casino.

The Stevens also acquired a parcel across the street from the Las Vegas Club, between Plaza and Main Street Station, for $7.5 million.

Yes, there will be a quiz.

A couple of hours later and virtually nothing of the shops remains. They’re going to need a really big vacuum cleaner.

Why is the demolition of the Blowout and Forever Flawless shops so important to the 18 Fremont project? We won’t ruin the surprise. (Suspense!) All we can say is there’s equipment in motion at 18 Fremont and that’s enough to get us excited about what’s to come.

Derek Stevens and others involved in the project have been tight-lipped about specifics of the new resort, but Stevens has at various times hinted it’s likely to take downtown’s pool scene to a whole new level. On an episode of our podcast, Stevens described downtown Las Vegas as “underpooled.”

The casino will be the centerpiece of the resort, of course, but multiple restaurant and bar offerings will also be in the mix. Stevens has also said it’s likely the resort will have a spa, but relatively few specifics about the resort have been shared to-date. Hey, we’re working on it.

It’s been confirmed the Las Vegas Club hotel towers (and indeed all the structures on the block) will be demolished, but not with an implosion.

After watching failed casino projects like Alon, and seemingly stalled projects like Resorts World, it’s refreshing to see a Las Vegas casino project moving forward full steam ahead. Millennial translation: Nobody’s come up with a better way of saying “full steam ahead” since the steam engine, sorry.

Here’s a peek inside what was the Blowout gift shop. Their inventory now consists largely of debris.

This new resort represents not only hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, but also an entirely new place for us to drink Captain Morgan and diets and play Top Dollar. Just keeping it real.

The forever forgettable Forever Flawless. Anything that decreases the number of annoying salespeople chasing us down Fremont Street Experience (where we work in marketing as our day job) hawking face cream is fine by us.

Here’s a little help with where this demolition site is in relation to things you might recognize, specifically a strip club and some classic neon, including Vegas Vickie.

The good news is we can all start using “Glitter Gulch” again without feeling the urge to get a “Silkwood” shower.

Update (2/23/17): Things move fast in Vegas, and what a difference 24 hours can make. Here’s a photo to keep you abreast, and not just because we love using the word “abreast” as often as possible.

Did we mention these demolition guys don’t mess around?

It’s a pretty straight shot to Fremont Street now.

Demolition guys must have really organized closets.

Demolition of the Blowout and Forever Flawless shops is expected to take just a few days (Feb. 24, 2017 is the expected completion date), but there’s much more in the works, so anticipate a cavalcade of security breaches in the months to come.

Update (2/26/17): Like we said, blink and you’ll miss it. We’re pretty sure we said that. Anyway, here’s another look at the site. Cleans up real nice.

A good many great things begin in tiny spaces. Which sounds a lot dirtier than it is.

Yes, yes, there’s video. Demanding, much?

We trust this won’t be our last update about the 18 Fremont construction project, so visit this Las Vegas blog often. Hourly, if possible. No pressure.