2006 will most likely be the last year for Vegas visitors to grab a piece of Stardust.

The Stardust Hotel & Casino, in business since 1958, will be closing later this year and torn down in 2007 to make way for a $4 billion development to be called Echelon Place it was announced last week. The 60-plus acre project from parent company Boyd Gaming will contain a grand total of 5,300 hotel rooms operating under four different banners.

The first, and by far the biggest, is the Boyd owned and operated Echelon Resort, a $2.9 billion hotel and casino that will feature 3,300 rooms – 2,600 “standard” units in one tower and 700 suites in a second.

Next will be a Las Vegas version of the chic Los Angeles hotel The Mondrian that will feature 1,000 rooms and a separate check-in, pool, restaurants, bars, and more.

The same group that is creating the Mondrian will also create a 600 room Delano hotel, patterned after the South Beach resort of the same name.

Finally, one of the leading hotel groups in Asia will build a 400 room Shangri-La hotel, complete with a 20,000 square-foot casino.

At the center of all of this accommodation madness is a massive casino and entertainment facility. It will feature 140,000 square-feet of casino space (that’s second only to MGM Grand on The Strip), a 350,000 square-foot shopping facility (roughly the same size as Venetian’s Grand Canal Shoppes), a 4,000-seat theater for major productions and concerts, a 1,500 seat theater for smaller events, 1 million square-feet of convention space, a giant pool and recreation area, and another spa.

The Echelon hotel rooms will most likely be built on top of the casino as is tradition while the other hotels popping up elsewhere on the property but with access to the central entertainment complex.

The whole thing will be an upscale development, going after the high-priced luxury market that is almost completely ignored in Las Vegas these days. Unless you count Bellagio, The Venetian, Caesars Palace, Wynn Las Vegas, and just about every other hotel being built in the city. Boyd Gaming insists that the middle-market will not be ignored in Echelon and future developments but from what they’re saying about the place you better start saving your money now.

Interestingly, there are no plans for any residential component at this time although that may be included on a 3-acre portion of the land that is not being developed in the initial phase.

Some of the people who helped develop and run Boyd’s very successful Borgata in Atlantic City are coming to Vegas to oversee the development and execution of the new mega-resort.

As mentioned, the Stardust is expected to remain open for business for the bulk of 2006 but will most likely close before the end of the year. Construction on the resort will begin in 2007 and is projected to be completed by 2010.