b'The multi-phase renovation underway today at El Cortez began in 2018 with a contest. Competing builders convened at Tower II, a section of the hotel erected in 1980, to see who did a better job renovating suites.The Korte team won, and our crews methodically remodeled Tower IIs suites a few floors at a time, moving from the top down. When COVID hit, El Cortez could have buckled under the pressure and ordered construction to stop.Instead, they doubled down. And we kept up. In one of the pandemics bittersweet silver linings, a reduced guest population allowed us to address the necessary replacement of the entire towers vertical waste vents without disrupting service to those who remained.KORTE|YEAR IN REVIEWThat replacement required equal measures of precision and timing, plus enough liquid nitrogen to keep the contents of the waste lines frozen while old sections were replaced with new.We also replaced the common pipe carrying all of the towers wastewater to city sewers. It was a surgical operation that crews successfully completed in a catwalk above the El Cortez casino floor. All this was finished several weeks early, generating savings of a couple hundred thousand dollars and allowing the hotel to welcome guests back ahead of schedule.But thats just the current phase. Theres more to come, and well be there. By the time its all done, El Cortezs look and feel will match its Old Vegas reputation.Its the genuine article. Its the one that wrote the book on how to do it right.P_3'