The Atrium Palazzo

Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city known primarily for its gambling, shopping, fine dining, entertainment, and nightlife. It is referred to as the “Entertainment Capital of the World” and “Sin City”, and much of the architecture and design in the city can be described as opulent and decadent. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, over 40 million tourists visit Las Vegas each year and gaming revenue in 2015 was $9.6B. It’s not surprising that construction projects related to tourism totaled more than $1B in 2016.

Sprawling mega-resorts on the strip in Las Vegas, such as the Palazzo, often encompass a convention center, hotel, casino, pool, spa, retail center, and more. Retail areas in large casinos, such as the Palazzo, are mostly owned and operated separately from the casinos and hotels.

The Hudson Group, an industry leader in travel and airport retail, operates more than 950 stores in the U.S. and Canada. The company recently expanded their portfolio to include luxury hotel retail in North America, and the Atrium at the Palazzo was their very first foray into the space.
The Hudson Group partnered with Big Red Rooster, design:retail magazine’s 2015 Design Firm of the Year, to design the retail concept that would offer “curated luxury”. Design elements of the experiential retail space were to include a curved path featuring island vitrines to showcase merchandise, and wavy walls forming dedicated niches for each brand. The bright white color scheme was to be accented by a textured gold and black lacquer façade framing floor-to-ceiling glass walls opening directly onto the casino floor.

Challenge

Although black and gold is a common color scheme in Las Vegas, they are colors that are hard to come by in the tile world. They tend to be niche colors not produced in large quantities, if at all, by manufacturers. Big Red Rooster was looking for extremely rich, high-end finishes in both gold and black tile and the black tile was envisioned a large, monolithic thin tile panels to retrofit the wall space.

Holding true to the design concept was very important to both Big Red Rooster and to the Hudson Group, as premium brands and high-end clientele would need to be attracted to the space, and the store front would have high-visibility. Layered on top of this was a budget and cost consideration. Typically, the rarer a look is, the more expensive it is to source it. Thin tile in the deep and true black, polished look that was desired is simply not produced in mass quantity. In addition, very few thin tile manufacturers can make thin tile panels in a polished finish. Sourcing expertise in this instance was paramount. Luckily, Creative Materials Corporation knows the world of tile inside and out and has a dedicated sourcing department capable of handling complex requests such as these.

Solution

Big Red Rooster was in a time-crunch and reached out to the Creative Materials team for help as they were having difficulty locating appropriate tile products that stayed within their design vision. The design team was working long hours to deliver a game-changing design concept to the customer, and was relieved to know that this portion of the project could be handled by a trusted partner. The Creative Materials sourcing department jumped right on the request and immediately knew what options could be considered that would deliver on price and aesthetic.

Success! A short time after the request came in, after reaching out to a multitude of manufacturing partners, the sourcing department landed on products that would be the perfect fit. The Slimtech large format thin tile was identified because of the collection’s ability to achieve a deep absolute black color with a brilliant gloss finish. The Nanoiconic wall tile collection was selected because it offered the brilliant gold colorway desired by the Big Red Rooster design team in a unique textured finish. Both products were a perfect fit.

Finding products to achieve the design vision for the project would only be half the “battle”. There were tight time frames in construction on the project which required a detailed supply plan to ensure installation timelines were met. The Creative Materials project management team developed a multi-modal supply chain solution that optimized cost and lead time for the supply of all products to the project. The optimized supply chain plan was beneficial not only in keeping to the schedule, but also in avoiding damage to the thin tile which needs special considerations when shipping.

The Pallazzo had very strict delivery requirements and could only receive materials between midnight and 5:00am. The Creative Materials project management team saw to it that both the thin tile and the gold wall tile was delivered correctly and was on time and ready for installation when needed.

The client liked the aesthetic achieved with the Slimtech and Nanoiconic so much that they decided to utilize that design for additional retail facades in the Palazzo.

The Atrium opened in November 2016 and the Hudson Group and Big Red Rooster’s vision for curated luxury is now a reality. The shopping experience includes rare pieces, accessories, fine jewelry and watches, beauty and fragrance, electronics, and spirits from premier brands such as Bovet, Dior, Christopher Claret, House of Sillage, Ferragamo, Westone and Remy Martin.

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