Las Vegas, once home to all-you-can-eat buffets and gritty gambling grottos, now shoots for the stratosphere with the opening of the 67-acre CityCenter. At a cost of $8.5 billion, CityCenter is the most expensive private construction project in America. First, the good news: the architecture, interior design, and art installations are world-class. Planned in the go-go years of the early 21st century, CityCenter boasts the 4,004-room Aria Resort and Casino (Cesar Pelli); the exquisite, gaming-free Mandarin Oriental hotel; two leaning condo towers called Veer; Vdara, a high-rise condo hotel; the still-uncompleted Harmon Hotel (Lord Norman Foster); and the shopping center Crystals (Daniel Libeskind). The size of the project and its traffic flow make it difficult to get out once you are inside - but CityCenter's exorbitant prices will force most visitors to forage across Las Vegas Boulevard to more wallet-friendly honkytonks.
Las Vegas remains the foreclosure capital of America. Tourism is faltering; Nevada faces a $1 billion budget deficit; and Crystals contains only retailers like Tiffany, Yves St. Laurent, Tom Ford, Prada, and Cartier - and restaurants like Wolfgang Puck or Eva Langoria Parker's would-be celebrity boite, Besos. Aria has even put The King on steroids. Viva Elvis, the new Cirque du Soleil musical whose opening has been postponed twice, is getting raspberries from preview audiences. Just down the street, Carl Icahn recently purchased the new $2 billion Fontainebleau Hotel and Casino project (only 70% complete) out of foreclosure for $186 million. There is trouble in River City.
The new Vegas, like the old, turns its back on gay/lesbian tourism, offering only Krave, a tired Planet Hollywood afterthought, as the one gay/alternative nightclub on The Strip. There is one gay male resort in town, which, like all the gay bars and gyms of Las Vegas, is located off the beaten path. In a town where most bars are open 24/7, the typical dilemma for gay tourists is determining when any of these destinations might actually draw a crowd. Yet because of their rather low aspirations, gay venues will probably fare better than overreaching CityCenter developers who hoped to fleece the few remaining high rollers of their hard-stolen cash. Yet schadenfreude has rarely come at such a price.
On a recent visit to Aria, the hotel's beautifully appointed rooms were a respite from the elegantly detailed but noxious cacophony of the casino floor. But like their predecessors, the designers of Aria require guests to walk through the casino to reach any of the resort's bars, restaurants, or entertainment venues. And about that perfume: Aria's HVAC system blows conditioned air through a scented oil chamber that makes the atmosphere smell like the perfume counter at Macy's. It cannot be turned off in individual guest rooms.
For CityCenter, there are only two long-term possibilities. In either scenario, Crystals is toast; salespeople already mill around their elegant boutiques, talking to each other because they have no customers. Longer-term prospects suggest the new hotel/casino venues, if they survive, will need to drastically reduce their rack rates. Yet such a reduction may not stave off foreclosure, especially since the entire project was financed in part by the teetering Middle-Eastern Dubai World syndicate. As for the elegant new condos, they'll have to practically give them away. And if CityCenter does survive, it will put nearby casinos out of business. The neighboring MGM Grand and Monte Carlo resorts already look like beat-up party girls next to their gleaming new neighbors.
Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20. Yet the fundamental miscalculation at the heart of CityCenter recalls the advice contained in an old animated television commercial for Star Kist tuna. Charlie the Tuna rests at the bottom of a sea, sporting a smoking jacket and ascot, lounging in a recliner and reading a newspaper while wondering why no one comes to call. The voiceover announcer explains, "Charlie, Star Kist doesn't want tuna with good taste, it wants tuna that tastes good." Whether on the Vegas strip or from the depths of an animated ocean, the echo of this wacky commercial aphorism still resonates.