GLENDALE, Ariz. — The massive VAI Resort near State Farm Stadium will use water recycling, cut the size of its pool and capture rainwater to compensate for the resort's water use, officials said Thursday.
VAI Resort will feature four hotel towers, hundreds of hotel rooms, 12 restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and a six-acre pool.
The resort is currently under construction near State Farm Stadium in Glendale., and Arizona is currently in the middle of a 22-year-long megadrought.
To compensate for the amount of water it will take to fill that pool, the builders plan to recycle the pool water for landscaping. The resort also plans to collect rainwater to compensate for the water that will be lost due to evaporation.
According to company officials, the resort has also cut the size of its pool down to six acres to save water.
“We're going to be using under half of the actual water that this was used for as an agricultural site," CEO Grant Fisher said. "So we're actually being more efficient than the previous site."
The VAI Resort site was originally farmland before being considered for development. It was overflow parking for State Farm Stadium. Then it was slated for an IKEA store before that company pulled out.
It was then a hotel project called Crystal Lagoons Island Resort, which had much the same plan and footprint as the current VAI construction. Fisher took over the project when Crystal Lagoons failed to materialize.
“In this case, we didn't get what we thought we wanted," Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers said. "This is, in my opinion, ten times better.”
VAI was slightly reimagined to focus more on the concert venue built in the middle of the pool. Instead of being beach- and lake-focused, the hotel is now music-focused, Fisher said.
The hotel forms an amphitheater around the stage, which will cost $40 million alone. The hotel is designed to open up to the outside so that patrons can hear and see the show from almost everywhere. Higher-end hotel rooms will also open directly onto the poolside for concert seating.
VAI is scheduled to open at the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024, Fisher said. Hotel rooms are expected to start at $500 and go farther up during concerts and events, he said.
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