You have to be 21 years of age or older to go to Circa Resort & Casino, which is located downtown on the Freemont Street Experience, at the former site of the Mermaids Casino and the Glitter Gulch strip club.
Circa opened in October 2020, at the height of the Covid Pandemic. It’s owned by brothers Derek and Greg Stevens, who first entered the downtown Las Vegas casino market in 2008 with a 50 percent state in the Golden Gate Hotel & Casino. The duo then went on to purchase Fitzgeralds (later renamed the D Las Vegas) in 2011, the Las Vegas Club in 2015 and Mermaids Casino in 2016. They demolished the Las Vegas Club and Mermaids to build Circa, which is hte biggest project of their career.
Derek Stevens serves as Circa's CEO. Greg is lower profile.
Circa is 35 floors, rising 480 feet. It's among the tallest buildings in the Las Vegas city limits. It has 512 rooms, with 26 different room types, ranging from 980 to 1,830 square feet. The rooms feature tablet computers that allow hotel guests to control the lighting and temperature of their rooms or to request housekeeping.
Circa boasts a two-story casino of 8,002 square feet, with 1,350 slot machines and 49 table games. Its also heavily focused on sports betting, with a three-story, stadium-style sportsbook, with seating for 1,000 people. The sportsbook has a three-story, high-definition, 78-millioin megapixel television screen, which cost about $20 million and requires as many 10 people to operate it.
Circa's rooftop pool area is called Stadium Swim and it's located above the casino. It has a 143-foot television screen with 14-million megapixels. Sporting events are primarily shown on the pool's TV. A three-story escalator, the tallest in Las Vegas, takes people to Stadium Swim, which includes a six-tiered pool area with a capacity for 4,000 people.
Circa has several restaurants, some operated by people from the Stevens' home state of Michigan. They include 8 East, an Asian-style restaurant; Barry's Downtown Prime, a steakhouse; Project BBQ, an outdoor restaurant with a food truck facade; and Saginaw's Delicatessen.
Derek Stevens has been a vocal supporter of the Oakland A's relocation to Las Vegas. He is the former owner of the Las Vegas 51s minor-league baseball team, which he sold to the Howard Hughes Corp. (which then renamed the team the Las Vegas Aviators) for $20 million. Stevens has said he is interested in partnering with the team when it comes to Las Vegas, saying Major League Baseball could be a boon for City Sin’s sports scene.
Circa Sports operates sports betting at all of the Stevens’ casinos. Circa Sports even opened a location in Colorado. The name Circa is intended to symbolize the history of the Las Vegas casino business leading up to the 21st century.
