MGM Mirage hires architect team for Vegas CityCenter

18.09.2005, Lesen Sie hier den Bericht über «MGM Mirage hires architect team for Vegas CityCenter».

MGM Mirage, the world's second-largest gambling company, said on Wednesday it has hired a team of architects to complete the design of its $5 billion CityCenter project on the Las Vegas Strip.

The company announced in April that it had hired architect Cesar Pelli to design the 4,000-room hotel and casino that will stand at the center of the development, then priced at $4.7 billion.

Pelli, known for projects including the Petronas high-rise towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has now been joined by Rafael Vinoly, Norman Foster, James KM Cheng and Kohn Pederson Fox Associates.

The architects will collaborate on the project, said MGM Chief Executive J. Terrence Lanni. "We don't want to have one of those college campuses that takes on the design of its latest owner," he said.

In addition to the hotel and casino, CityCenter will include two boutique hotels, shopping and entertainment, and 1,640 condominiums and hotel/condominium units on land south of MGM's high-end Bellagio casino. The 18 million square-foot project is five times the size of Bellagio.

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In a city known for being big on building big, MGM Mirage is giving the public its first look at the biggest thing ever built here -- or maybe anywhere. On Thursday morning, the company released more detailed plans for its Project CityCenter, a $5 billion mixed-use monster on the Las Vegas Strip that will boast 18 million square feet of casino, hotel, condominium and retail space -- roughly six times the size of the company's flagship Bellagio resort.

"This is the most expensive privately funded project in U.S. history," said MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni. "You could take Rockefeller Center and throw in SoHo and Times Square, and this is bigger." To be constructed on 66 acres between the company's Bellagio and Monte Carlo casinos, the project will be anchored by a 4,000-room, 60-story hotel tower with a "sophisticated, contemporary design [that] will be demonstrably different from any building that has preceded it," the company. Also on site will be two 400-room high-end boutique-style hotels, 1,640 condominium units and 500,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment space.

Lanni said the company is at the halfway point of a 20-month design process and has assembled a "dream team" of architectural and construction talent to create what he vowed "will truly be the center of Las Vegas," which has never really had one before.

Among those signed on are Cesar Pelli to design the central hotel, and James K.M. Cheng to do some of the residential areas. Gensler is the executive architect while Perini Building will be primary contractor. The project is expected to create about 7,000 construction jobs and 12,000 new permanent ones.

MGM Mirage plans to finance CityCenter through preconstruction sales of condos, bank loans and its own considerable free-cash flow, which is currently in excess of $2 billion a year. It is getting no public funds or tax breaks.

"This certainly sounds ambitious," said Dean Schwanke of the Urban Land Institute, who said it dwarfs some other big current projects like Atlantic Station in Atlanta. "If you are going to do it you might as well do it when the market is good."

The project "is like something they would build in China," he added. "And it's a good idea in that Las Vegas doesn't really have a center to it."

Schwanke was also stuck by the fact that MGM Mirage is getting absolutely no public assistance. "That's pretty unusual. Redevelopment projects like this often have several levels of public involvement: local, state and federal."

Lanni, however, said that is standard operating procedure for the gambling industry. Unlike other businesses, "we not only never get tax breaks, we get the privilege of paying a casino entertainment tax. That is normal in every state where we operate."

While a project of this size and scale might be expected to suck the wind out of the rest of the area, several of MGM Mirage's competitors expressed enthusiasm for it.

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MGM Mirage Reveals Details

MGM Mirage holds 832 acres of land on the Strip, but the company's focus these days centers on 66 acres it owns between Bellagio and the Monte Carlo. MGM Mirage executives will unveil details on the progress of Project CityCenter, a $5 billion urban core that MGM Mirage Chairman Terry Lanni said is the largest and most expensive private development under way in the United States. CityCenter will cover an area bigger than New York's Rockefeller Center, Times Square and SoHo combined, Lanni said.

On the drawing board are a 60-story, 4,000-room hotel-casino and 500,000 square feet of retail space. In addition, two nongaming boutique hotels, including a five-star property, will have 400 rooms each. The development is also slated to include two 500-unit condominium high-rises in a rental pool similar to the company's Residences at MGM Grand. Both boutique hotels will have about 200 condominiums each, and 140 condominiums will be incorporated into the retail district as lofts, brownstones or other attached-housing styles.

MGM Mirage, which is about halfway through a 20-month design process for CityCenter, has not established designs, prices or a beginning sales date for the condominiums. MGM Mirage will also announce this morning the roster of architects working on CityCenter. They include Connecticut-based Cesar Pelli and Associates, which designed the world's tallest buildings, Malaysia's Petronas Towers. Cesar Pelli is the lead architect on the 4,000-room hotel- casino.

Rafael Vi?oly Architects of New York, which designed Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, will create plans for the condominium-hotel towers. Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates of New York and Adam Tihany, who designed Mandalay Bay's Aureole and The Mirage's Cravings, will design the five-star hotel.

Sir Norman Foster, a London designer who has won architecture's renowned Pritzker Prize, will design the exterior of the second boutique hotel. Amsterdam-based Gensler is the executive architecture firm overseeing design of CityCenter, and Perini Corp. will be the general contractor.

The Light Group, which operates the Light nightclub and Fix restaurant at Bellagio, will operate one of the boutique hotels. Lanni said MGM Mirage will soon announce the five-star hotel operator. The company is also working with several architects on possible designs for the retail space. Lanni said CityCenter is a necessary new direction for development on the Strip.

"There's not a city in the United States that is ahead of Las Vegas in the quality of dining, the quality of accommodations and the quality of entertainment," Lanni said. "What doesn't exist on the Strip is permanent residences. (CityCenter) brings in that living component. It creates a new core, a center for Las Vegas." Andrew Zarnett, a gaming analyst with Deutsche Bank, said CityCenter will redefine MGM Mirage and the Strip.

"This is going to be the center of the new vertical development of Las Vegas on and off the Strip," Zarnett said. "Clearly, it will be the lion's share of MGM growth over the course of the next decade or many more years."

Hal Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said CityCenter could also reshape the demographics of the Strip. While most resort destinations have more condominiums and timeshares than hotel rooms, Las Vegas has always been a "room destination," Rothman said. That will change when CityCenter opens in late 2009.

"CityCenter has kicked off a revolution in property development here that will give the market a reasonable share of privately owned properties," Rothman said. "The question becomes, Will people live in them? I don't know if anyone knows the answer to that yet."

It's an important question, Rothman said, because visitors who spend $250 a night to stay in the Strip's upscale resorts could decide to buy a Strip vacation home instead. If buyers rent their condos out, that could skim market share from hotels, compelling resort operators in turn to look for new visitor markets.

But Lanni said CityCenter will add amenities to an area that is relatively under-served in sectors such as retail, thus boosting area properties such as the Aladdin and the nascent Harmon Avenue Corridor east of the Strip, where the Related Cos. and Starwood Hotels and Resorts are planning big projects.

"If we were merely building (room) capacity without excitement or a spectacular approach, that would really burden the marketplace," Lanni said. "CityCenter will be a new paradigm for decades to come. It will give people more to do and make other nearby properties more valuable."

Lanni said 350 of the company's 832 Strip acres are undeveloped or underdeveloped, and that translates into the potential for additional development. Future phases of CityCenter could involve residential development on land behind the Monte Carlo and New York-New York, which MGM Mirage acquired when it bought Mandalay Resort Group in April.

"The most important thing to understand about (MGM's) acquisition of Mandalay Bay is that MGM decided to hitch its star to Las Vegas," Rothman said. "At this point, we have a homegrown company dominant in the city and, to a large degree, in the industry. CityCenter further commits MGM to Las Vegas. At the same time, it further commits Las Vegas to MGM."

Über MGM Resorts International Operations, Inc.:

MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) ist ein globales Unterhaltungsunternehmen des S&P 500 mit nationalen und internationalen Standorten, das erstklassige Hotels und Casinos, hochmoderne Tagungs- und Konferenzräume, unglaubliche Live- und Theaterunterhaltungserlebnisse bietet und eine umfangreiche Auswahl an Restaurants, Nachtleben und Einzelhandelsangeboten.

Das MGM Resorts-Portfolio umfasst 29 einzigartige Hotel- und Destination-Gaming- Angebote, darunter einige der bekanntesten Resort-Marken der Branche.

Wir betreiben ein Portfolio von Resorts in Las Vegas, darunter Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay und The Mirage, The Signature, Excalibur, Luxor, New York-New York, Park MGM und weitere. In Las Vegas haben wir auch eine bedeutende Beteiligung an CityCenter, dem legendären Hotel, Kongress-, Einzelhandels- und Restaurantkomplex im Herzen des Las Vegas Strip mit ARIA Resort und Casino und Vdara Hotel und Spa, Crystals Retail und Veer Eigentumswohnungen.

Das Unternehmen expandierte in den USA und auf der ganzen Welt und erwarb kürzlich den Betrieb des Empire City Casino in New York und des Hard Rock Rocksino in Ohio, das in MGM Northfield Park umbenannt wurde.

Im Jahr 2018 eröffneten MGM Resorts MGM Springfield in Massachusetts, MGM COTAI in Macau und das erste Hotel der Marke Bellagio in Shanghai.

Die über 80.000 Mitarbeiter von MGM Resorts weltweit sind stolz darauf, dass ihr Unternehmen als eines der weltweit am meisten bewunderten Unternehmen des FORTUNE Magazine anerkannt wurde.

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