$7.4 Billion CityCenter Takes Shape

By Tony Illia

MGM MIRAGE plans to submit it’s massive seven-building CityCenter development for LEED Silver certification.

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Project CityCenter is as big as they come.

MGM MIRAGE’s $7.4 billion, 18.67 million-sq-ft, mixed-use development will consist of residences, hotels, casinos, shops, restaurants and showrooms.

CityCenter will also be green, seeking LEED Silver certification.

Perini Building Co. of Phoenix is the general contractor; Tishman Construction Corp., New York, is the construction manager; and San Francisco-based Gensler is the master architect.

The site is anchored by twin, 60-story, cast-in-place concrete-and-glass hotel towers designed by Cesar Pelli, architect of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. The dual skyscrapers, which total 6.5 million sq ft, feature 4,000 hotel rooms, a 200,000-sq-ft casino, 1,800-seat Cirque du Soleil theater and 225,000 sq ft of meeting space.

The residential portion contains 1,543 condo-hotel units and 1,159 condos in five distinct towers, including the dual, 37-story Veer Towers,  the 50-story Vdara condo-hotel, the 442-room Mandarin Oriental and the 228-unit Harmon Hotel & Residences.

The 76-acre, seven-building development will also feature a 550,000-sq-ft shopping mall designed by World Trade Center architect Daniel Libeskind.

Additional site facilities include 15,000 parking spaces, 12.8 acres of open space and an onsite fire and paramedic station.

“We will employ up to 7,000 people during the peak of construction activity or one-third of southern Nevada’s total union trade workforce,” says Perini vice chairman Richard Rizzo. “There will also be about 350 professional administrative staff and 350 subs and suppliers.”

The site is broken into three major building blocks, each with its own management and supervisory team. The towers are cast-in-place concrete structures with post-tensioned floor slabs and glass exteriors, flanked by steel-framed low-rise buildings and cast-in-place parking structures. High-rise erection will rely on flying forms with a combination of tower and mobile cranes. Buildings rest atop reinforced concrete mat foundations with spread footings over drilled piles.

Las Vegas-based Rinker Materials Nevada has a batch plant onsite to provide the approximately 1 million cu yds of concrete needed for the project. Workers will pour roughly 775 cu yds each day.

“We’re self-performing the carpentry work because it gives us greater control over the project quality and schedule,” Rizzo says.

CityCenter will be serviced by a 2,090-ft-long monorail extension. Munich-based Siemens has a six-year, $100 million design-build contract to construct the central plant, which will generate enough cooling power for 6,000 homes.

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