CityCenter Retail, Non-Gaming Hotels Opening

LAS VEGAS-One of the largest private developments in history begins opening this week on the Las Vegas Strip. The $9-billion, 67-acre CityCenter development by MGM Mirage and Dubai World includes 17-million square feet of development including 6,800 hotel and condominium units in six towers, a 500,000-square-foot retail and entertainment district, an Elvis Presley-themed Cirque du Soleil production and a monorail to move people between MGM’s three contiguous resorts, Monte Carlo, CityCenter and Bellagio.

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.