Today’s Quashed Rumor: No, “Circa 2” Was Not Announced

By Scott Roeben, on May 05 2025
3 min read 4 comments
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Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley recently gave her State of the City address.

During the speech, Berkley “announced” plans for a new casino resort project, “Circa 2.”

The problem is that’s not a thing. In political parlance, that’s what’s known as an “oopsie.” Tellingly, the City’s highlights from the mayor’s speech didn’t include the “Circa 2” mention.

Our new mayor jumped the gun or whatever the politically correct way of saying that is now. How about this: “This news was activated before the collective had saged the space.”

When the mayor dropped the “Circa 2” news into her speech, some news outlets, including our friends at Channel 8, rushed to pass along the unconfirmed story.

Fact-checking, not so much.

We, of course, love rumors. Especially the unconfirmed ones. They tend to be more fun than news releases. We often pass along rumors from sources who don’t always get it right. This is a fun rumor, it’s just not, you know, accurate.

We love Circa and would love to see another resort from Derek and Greg Stevens, owners of Circa, Golden Gate and The D downtown.

We were actually the first to report on the parcel being discussed as a potential location for a Circa expansion.

Back in 2017, we shared a land purchase by the Stevens, a parcel called P/Q, in Symphony Park, just across the railroad tracks from the Plaza.

We also reported the parcel is the only part of Symphony Park that is zoned for gambling.

This leads to a lot of exciting possibilities, including the potential of another venture from the brothers Stevens.

Awkwardly, though, such a project doesn’t exist and hasn’t been announced, despite the mention by the mayor.

The fact is the site is going to be the construction yard for another Symphony project, Cello Tower, for about the next three years. Cello will be a condo tower, so we are incapable of caring less.

What that means is a Stevens project isn’t happening anytime soon and may not happen at all.

PQ site Derek Stevens
The P/Q site has unlimited potential, but the farther from Fremont Street you get, the greater the peril, financial and otherwise.

The Stevens aren’t planning anything because they can’t foretell the future. There’s no telling what the casino-resort landscape will look like in three years and beyond.

The Stevens are good businesspersons, so would not just barrel ahead without a lot of analysis and planning.

And Derek Stevens, the P.T. Barnum of Las Vegas casino public relations, would never, ever let the mayor steal the thunder of announcing a new casino in a State of the City speech, viewed by upwards of two dozen people.

Is there going to be development on the P/Q site? Probably. Someday. There’s nothing new about that, we told you about that eventuality back in 2017.

Is “Circa 2” (a name we’re pretty sure they aren’t going to call a future casino) happening in the foreseeable future? Nope.

Was the mayor winging it and trying to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into her speech to talk up downtown Las Vegas? Yep.

She did get the part about an art museum spearheaded by Elaine Wynn, who recently passed away.

Yes, we broke the story about the art museum, but we definitely aren’t going to mention that following about the death of a Las Vegas luminary as that would be insensitive.

We hope this clears up any confusion about “Circa 2” and the mayor’s remarks in her speech and the resulting news coverage.

There is some spicy news related to Circa, but we’ve been sworn to secrecy. Let’s just say it’s one of the coolest Las Vegas things in recent memory.

More to come.