Opening this week is the Crystals shopping and entertainment district, the 1,495-room Vdara condo-hotel and spa and the 400-unit Mandarin Oriental hotel. Aria, the project's anchor, a 61-story, 4,004-room casino-hotel at the back of the site, opens December 16. The development also includes the 674-unit Veer Towers, the development's only strictly residential building, and the 400-room Harmon Hotel, which is slated to open in late 2010 due in part to construction errors that cost that tower its condo component.

The LEED-Gold development was designed by eight architectural firms including Pelli Clarke Pelli; Kohn Pedersen Fox; Helmut Jahn; RV Architecture LLC, led by Rafael Vinoly; Foster + Partners; Studio Daniel Libeskind; David Rockwell and Rockwell Group; Gensler; and Tihany Design. MGM Mirage launched a new web site for the development a couple of weeks ago.

The recently released Las Vegas Strip Forecast & Investment Guide by the gaming experts at CB Richard Ellis predicts that revenue from Las Vegas Strip resorts will increase between 3.0% and 7.0% in 2010 thanks to CityCenter and new towers at the Hard Rock and Planet Hollywood resorts, but it will come at a cost for existing properties.