A new casino project was approved for the Las Vegas Strip, on a site that’s become all too familiar to passersby.

Clark County commissioners on Wednesday approved plans by developer Eli Applebaum for a 752-room resort on the site of Las Vegas’ failed Ferris wheel project.

Applebaum purchased his nearly 12-acre spread along Las Vegas Boulevard, across from Mandalay Bay, this spring for $70 million from a group that acquired the property years ago through a bankruptcy case.

The tract included vacant land, a few small buildings, and the remains of the never-finished SkyVue observation-wheel project: two giant concrete columns that have been sticking out of the ground for more than a decade.

Overall, Applebaum’s plans call for a hotel tower with a heart-shaped facade covered by a massive LED screen; a covered pedestrian plaza, similar to downtown’s Fremont Street Experience; and a midair restaurant that incorporates the leftover towers, county records show.

The development is penciled for a blighted property in Las Vegas’ famed casino corridor, with smokestack-like towers that have been a constant and visible reminder of a big project that flamed out years ago.

Land-use consultant Nancy Amundsen, representing Applebaum, told the commission on Wednesday that the site has “two matchsticks, as we call them.” She also said that she has talked a number of times with casino giant MGM Resorts International, adding the company wants the towers to come down or for the property to get developed.

“They just want something to happen,” she said.

MGM, operator of Mandalay Bay and several other hotel-casinos on the Strip, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SkyVue developer Howard Bulloch of Compass Investments envisioned a $100 million-plus project with a 500-foot observation wheel, a roller coaster and retail and restaurant space.

His team announced in 2011 that the project — then called the Skyvue Las Vegas Super Wheel — was “about to get off the ground.” And in 2012, they announced that the first phase of construction was completed.

But the project reportedly ran into financial problems and was never finished.

Bulloch owned 38.5 acres along the south Strip, and by 2015 the spread was up for sale with a reported price tag of more than $10 million an acre, or more than $385 million.

It didn’t trade hands.

Bulloch previously told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he had the site “in escrow numerous times,” but buyers “were just not able to arrange their financing as they had promised.”

Eventually, the real estate holdings came up for sale in 2020 through a bankruptcy auction.

That summer, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Gary Spraker approved plans for Seattle-area businessman Wayne Perry to acquire the SkyVue site and nearby parcels — nearly 20 acres total — with a $75 million credit bid.

Court records show that Perry had pumped tens of millions of dollars into the project, the Review-Journal previously reported.

In 2023, his family sold around 8 acres of its holdings along the Strip for $16.2 million to the Clark County Department of Aviation.

Then, in April, Applebaum bought his project site from the family.

Applebaum had sought to build an 874-room resort, county records show. But on Wednesday, Amundsen told the Clark County Commission that her client had to reduce the building height by about 60 feet to secure Federal Aviation Administration approval, which, she added, has been obtained.

She also said the leftover towers from the SkyVue project would be strengthened and get another pillar for the envisioned sky restaurant venue.

Those changes, she said, would “hopefully make it look a little nicer” than what’s currently on the site.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.