Can Do Spirit

Eastside Cannery Brings High Style to Boulder Highway

By Tony Illia

A high-end resort off the beaten path, the $250 million Eastside Cannery replaces the old Nevada Palace Hotel on Boulder Highway with a stylish 16-story hotel tower and casino podium.

Casinos are nothing new to Las Vegas. But high-end resorts targeting locals are, especially when they are far from the Strip.

One such resort is the $250 million Eastside Cannery Casino & Hotel at Boulder Highway and Harmon Avenue in east Las Vegas. M.J. Dean Construction, Las Vegas, is the general contractor, and Las Vegas-based Cannery Casino Resorts is the developer.

“We really believe this is a new paradigm for the Boulder Highway,” says William Wortman, co-owner of Cannery Casino Resorts, which was purchased in December by Australian gaming company Crown Ltd. “The facility will be a much more modern building, and a continuation and evolution of the Cannery brand.”

Cannery Casino Resorts also developed the 201-room, 241,000-sq-ft Cannery Hotel & Casino, which opened five years ago at 2121 E. Craig Road in North Las Vegas. It evokes an industrial-age, post-World War II era with corrugated metal, exposed building systems, roll-up doors and pin-up girl advertising. Interior designer Yates-Silverman Inc. and Klai Juba Architects, both of Las Vegas, were responsible for the Cannery’s look and are partnering again for the Eastside Cannery.

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Eastside Cannery replaces the 30-year-old, 208-room Nevada Palace Hotel & Casino, which was demolished last year to make room for the 530,000-sq-ft hotel and casino complex. New York-based LVI Services Inc. was the demolition contractor. The aging building was torn down piecemeal using backhoes and bulldozers, allowing Nevada Palace to stay open for business throughout much of the three-week demolition process.

The project broke ground in April, 2007.

“We spent three months in preplanning, reviewing logistics, scheduling and constructability with the project participants before breaking ground,” says Harry Kimbler, M.J. Dean’s project manager. “Construction is on time and on budget.”

The resort will make its debut in August.

Eastside Cannery calls for a 16-story, 307-room hotel and 271,000-sq-ft podium with a casino, restaurants, bars and performance space. Situated on 47.5 acres, the 211-ft-tall, cast-in-place hotel tower rests atop a concrete mat and grade-beam foundation over drilled caissons measuring 3 ft in diameter and 40 ft deep. The high-rise went-up at rate of a floor a week, topping out on Dec. 7.

M.J. Dean is self-performing the concrete work, using “flying forms,” a construction technique that lifts horizontal formwork intact via crane from one floor to the next. The erection method enabled speedy progress that saw the tower rise at a rate of one floor a week. The hotel has 20,000 sq ft. post-tensioned floor plates with supporting columns spread on a 21-ft grid. Lochsa Engineering, Las Vegas, is the structural engineer.

Klai Juba designed the hotel tower to be sheathed in a bronze-colored ionized glass that stretches from floor to floor. It’s accented by vertical EIFS bands and horizontal tubular yellow sunshades at each level.

There is also yellow I-beam, X-bracing running alongside the building exterior that is ornamental as opposed to structural. The building’s top level features a restaurant, nightclub and lounge. It has 17-ft cantilevered balconies and glass walls that fold back like an accordion to create open air areas.

The tower has a saw-tooth roofline that evokes a sunlit cannery warehouse from the ‘50s. The staggered steel-framed crown, which houses the rooftop air handlers, also features LED lighting that can be programmed to change colors and create patterns. YESCO of Las Vegas is the lighting contractor.

“We wanted to use new and more modern materials, while still referencing the original Cannery in North Las Vegas so it didn’t feel like a totally different atmosphere,” says Robert White, an associate architect with Klai Juba. “There are touchstones from the Cannery inside the new casino, including soffits, a center bar and an open-grid ceiling. There are a lot of different kinds of finishes with dull and shiny woods, metals and wall coverings.”

The two-level podium houses a 65,000-sq-ft casino, with 2,000 slot machines, 26 table games and a 400-seat bingo hall. Other amenities include five restaurants, four bars and an entertainment lounge. There is an additional half-acre outdoor pool area with Jacuzzis and cabanas, plus a spa and 20,000 sq ft of meeting space.

The podium has oversized detailing with exposed mechanical duct-work and backlit columns wrapped in an opaque plastic. The 77-ft-tall, steel-framed structure has a skin of brick veneer, metal paneling and EIFS, with a main porte-cochere entrance facing Boulder Highway. The project has a mustard, orange and avocado color palette.

“There will be 400 tradespeople onsite during the peak of construction activity,” says Kimbler. “The site provides plenty of room for staging and material deliveries and storage. But coordination between the subs and installation of the project’s various finishes will be challenging.”

Key Players

Owner/Developer: Cannery Casino Resorts LLC
General Contractor: M.J. Dean Construction
Architect: Klai Juba Architects
Interior Design: Yates-Silverman Inc.
Structural Engineer: Lochsa Engineering
Subcontractors: Steel Structures; Bombard Mechanical; Sun City Electric; Century Steel; LVI Services Inc.; Standard Drywall Inc.; Sierra Glass

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