An Unexpected Trip To City Center
To tell you the honest to God truth, being stranded in Las Vegas while Hurricane Sandy is pummeling the east coast
has its advantages. One of which is having the time to do a little snooping on a construction project that I have been hearing about for over five years. It’s a little place called City Center.
I will say that City Center is a magnificent amalgam of buildings on the Las Vegas Strip. And at $9.2 billion, it puts the Revel Casino to shame at Revel’s mere $2 billion. The price tag on City Center actually makes it the most expensive privately funded construction project in the United States.
Five of the six buildings in City Center received LEED Gold certification. Some of City Center’s green features include reclaimed rainwater and an onsite power plant. Interestingly, the one building of the six that was not LEED certified was the Harmon Hotel, which now sits vacant after being classified as unsuitable for occupancy due to construction defects.
The Harmon Hotel situation now stands as one of the largest construction defect lawsuits ever. The owner of the Hotel is claiming that the $275 million building requires a complete demolition due to the omission of required reinforcement in the lower level concrete columns. The contractor claims that repairs can be made to the entire structure for about $20 million which is less than the $30 million it would cost to demolish the building.
The whole things sounds very strange to me. Knowing what I know about the construction process, I’m shocked to
hear that this kind of defect can occur after going through an extensive design and shop drawing review process prior to construction. How can this kind of thing get missed? And then after they build the columns, they finish the whole friggin’ building! I’d love to know what really happened. But as of now, the owner claims that the building would collapse in an earthquake and the Harmon Hotel stands as the world’s most expensive billboard.
But regardless, City Center is pretty cool.
