[1][2] In 1973, plans were announced for a hotel project to be built on the land, with construction expected to begin at the end of the year.

The company did not intend to finance a gaming enterprise, and the developers initially said they had no intention of adding a casino to the project when they applied for the loan.

Prudential's San Francisco office, which provided the loan, believed that the casino was merely a later addition with no intention of deceit.

Hoseit, a California lawyer, had been named in several civil suits, accusing him of fraud, owing money, and causing pollution to water in Lake Tahoe.

[18] A year later, plans were announced for an eventual expansion that would include 10,000 sq ft (930 m2) of gaming space and a 150-room tower, both to be built on land that was then occupied by the Stardust Motel.

[19] Demolition of the Stardust Motel concluded in 1977, and construction began on a new building for additional casino, convention, and restaurant space.

[22][23] At the end of the year, the Reno City Council approved plans for a 19-story tower to be built at the base of the new casino building.

[26] At the end of 1978,[27][28] during construction of the tower, Karadanis had plumbing installed on the office floors, which he now intended to finish as part of the hotel.

[29] Two months after work resumed, the Sundowner became the focus of a federal grand jury investigation into sewer allocation procedures being taken by the city.

[33] In April 1979, the Reno City Council denied Karadanis' request to add additional hotel space in the tower.

[37] The tower neared completion at the end of 1979,[33] when the city approved the conversion of the office space into 162 hotel rooms.

[44][45][46][47][48][49] In 1986, the Sundowner and Karadanis had to pay $1.2 million in punitive damages after being found liable for a theft that occurred in one of the hotel rooms two years earlier, the result of inadequate security.

The fire was contained after an hour, and was confined to concrete electrical transformer rooms, located beneath the hotel buildings.

[61][6][62] Approximately half of the Sundowner's clientele consisted of tourists who arrived through charter buses,[61][63] although business suffered further when bus companies began diverting their customers to tribal casinos in California.

[63] On October 2, 2003, Karadanis announced that the Sundowner would close on December 1 due to economic losses, caused by competition with the Silver Legacy, as well as mega-resorts in Las Vegas and the tribal casinos in California.

[64][65] However, because of the financial problems, the Sundowner was unable to continue operations any longer and ultimately closed three weeks early, on the morning of November 10, 2003.

[66][67] The closure affected 375 employees,[68] and some of them subsequently pushed for changes to federal laws to give workers more financial protection whenever a business closes.

[72] Siavash Barmand, a California developer, expressed an interest in purchasing the Sundowner and redeveloping it as a condominium facility with first-time buyers in mind.

[79] Although completion was set for January 2005, the date was pushed back as the development team found little to salvage inside the buildings.

[92][93][94] By the end of 2008, the Belvedere had been put up for sale, at a time when many local condo projects were suffering the effects of the Great Recession.

Later in the year, clean-up began on the site, which included repairing and repainting the burned portion of the tower and removing a giant "condominiums for sale" sign.

[84] By that time, the project had accumulated $783,000 in unpaid property taxes for the past four years, owed by developer Belvedere LLC.

[98] In April 2011, Washoe County auctioned 92 unsold units in the north tower, in order to receive the money that was owed in unpaid taxes.

The units were sold for $2 million to David Lonich, an attorney from Santa Rosa, California who had previously represented Madjlessi.

Madjlessi had already sold the south tower to Mountain Air Enterprises, a company owned by investor Steven Scarpa, who was a fellow resident of Marin County, California.

[91] Scarpa sold the south tower in November 2017, to Pine Cone Circle Investment, an affiliate of the Lake Tahoe company Prim Ventures.

Prim looked at other properties – such as 3rd Street Flats in Reno – for ideas regarding the unfinished Sundowner tower, which contained nearly 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m2) of space.

Prim had no schedule for its plans, but intended to redevelop the tower as a mixed-use project that would include residential units, most likely apartments.