Before the Sundowner, the land at the corner of downtown Reno held Central Junior High School, which closed in 1966 and was demolished two years later. In 1973, Karadanis and his partner Maloff announced plans for a hotel on the site. The 11-story tower opened on May 23, 1975, with 349 rooms, making it Reno's largest hotel. Prudential Insurance had financed the project believing it would be just a hotel. When they discovered casino space had been completed, they were not pleased. Their San Francisco office chalked it up to a misunderstanding rather than deception. The casino opened two months after the hotel with 200 slot machines. Karadanis employed approximately 350 people and had already set his sights on expansion.

The plumbing incident was just the beginning of Karadanis's conflicts with city hall. The Reno City Council denied his requests for additional hotel space multiple times. Councilmember Bill Wallace did not mince words: "We said no and you, in effect, said we don't care. Your organization is thumbing its nose at the council." A grand jury probed the tower construction. Yet Karadanis persisted, and eventually the tower was completed at the end of 1979, bringing the Sundowner to 583 rooms. The property faced other troubles: a $4.4 million lawsuit from a construction worker paralyzed during the tower's construction, a $1.2 million judgment for inadequate security after a hotel room theft, and electrical fires in 1987, 1990, and 1993. Through it all, the Sundowner kept running.

The opening of the Silver Legacy resort in 1995 marked the beginning of the end. The new mega-resort drew customers away, and profits fell. The Sundowner invested $2 million in upgrades and new casino games starting in 1999, but the bleeding continued. Charter buses, which once delivered half the casino's clientele, began diverting to California tribal casinos. On the morning of November 10, 2003, the Sundowner closed three weeks earlier than planned. Employees received three days' notice and no severance package. The closure affected 375 workers, some of whom sued and pushed for changes to federal labor laws.

California developer Siavash Barmand purchased the property in 2004 with plans to convert it into condominiums called Belvedere Towers, named after his hometown in the Bay Area. The north tower reopened in 2007 with 177 units, though only a dozen residents had moved in by 2008. Then came the Great Recession. Work on the south tower halted. An arson fire in 2008 caused $120,000 in damage to the incomplete building. More than 200 liens were filed against the property. By 2010, the city had issued numerous code violation fines. In 2011, Washoe County auctioned 92 unsold units for unpaid taxes, fetching just $2 million total, with individual units selling for as little as $12,000. Bijan Madjlessi, who had taken over the project, died in an auto accident in 2014. The south tower remains unfinished. In 2022, the Reno Housing Authority explored purchasing it for affordable housing at $18 million plus $50 million in renovations, but dropped the offer after receiving no response from the owner.