The recession has hit the once-booming Las Vegas restaurant industry particularly hard, The New York Times reported this week. Last year, a fourth of the country’s highest-grossing restaurants were in town, but now that fewer tourists and travelers are arriving, and those who do are spending less, there are more than 5,000 food and restaurant workers unemployed.
Among the culprits for the industry's troubles are the $4.8 billion 87-acre Echelon project, on which construction stopped last August (along plans for its 12 to 15 new restaurants), as well as the unfinished $2.9 billion 3,815-room Fontainebleau, which went bankrupt and sacrificed 6,000 jobs. But the soon-to-open $8.5 billion CityCenter project could be a significant boon (or perhaps the opposite) for the industry.
There are about 2,900 restaurants currently operating in town, according to The Times.
