Going for Broke

Merrill Shindler reports.

Las Vegas-Even in Las Vegas-a city where ginormous is about as small as things get-the stats for CityCenter are breath-stopping. It sits on 67 prime acres in the dead center of the Las Vegas Strip, with the Bellagio on one side, the Monte Carlo on the other. The half-dozen main structures have a footprint of 18,000,000 square feet (by comparison, the Pentagon has a modest footprint of 6.5 million square feet). When CityCenter fully opens in 2010 (its first stage opens in December 2009), it will employ more than 12,000 workers. It was originally budgeted at $4 billion-but that was back when a billion dollars was a billion dollars. The final cost has been estimated at $8.5 billion, making it the largest privately financed development in American history. It's co-owned by MGM Mirage and Dubai World. And it's somewhat beyond ironic that to build CityCenter, it was necessary to tear down another structure-The Boardwalk Hotel and Casino. Welcome to Monopolyville.

CityCenter is the very essence of the term "mixed-use complex"-for its uses are many, and its structure is decidedly complex. At the center of CityCenter is a retail and entertainment array called Crystals. Surrounding Crystals are the 61-story Aria Resort and Casino, the 57-story Vdara hotel and spa, the 25-story Harmon Hotel, Spa & Residences, the 47-story Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas, and a residential structure called the Veer Towers (37 stories tall). CityCenter will also be home to the first grocery store to open on the Strip. Which means tourists will no longer have to buy their Mountain Dew in casino gift shops-though the notion of walking down the Strip with a supermarket shopping bag in each hand is a bit odd.

The grocery store is, of course, there for the many (hoped-for) residents of the approximately 2,400 condos in the complex. The guests in the 4,800 hotel rooms will most likely be eating in the restaurants. And the options (though not all finalized) are virtually encyclopedic; in a city where eating is second only to slot machines as an obsessive activity, the possibilities for a meal at CityCenter approach the infinite.

At Crystals, those in need of a bit of refreshment after a day spent shopping at Prada, Christian Dior, Bulgari, Tom Ford, Carolina Herrera, Hermès, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., and a 20,000-square-foot Apple store, can stop at Beso (an upscale Latin concept by Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria Parker and Todd English), along with Mastro's Ocean Club, two new Wolfgang Puck concepts (including a classic French brasserie), and a modern pub by English.

The Aria Resort and Casino will be home to a pair of restaurants by Masayoshi Takayama (Masa in New York City)-both a casual Bar Masa and a more formal space called Shaboo, described as "a private dining paradise." Michael Mina is going piscatorial with American Fish. Julian Serrano is opening an eponymous space with a raw bar and tapas bar. From Jean-Georges Vongerichten comes Jean Georges Steakhouse, while Sirio Maccioni is going classic Italian at Sirio. (And yes, self-named restaurants seem to be the Las Vegas trend of the moment.) Shawn McClain (Spring, Green Zebra and Custom House, all in Chicago) is doing the sustainable farm-to-table thing at Sage. And for dessert, there's JP Patisserie from Jean-Philippe Maury.

Martin Heierling (of Sensi at the Bellagio) has signed on at Vdara as the hotel's executive chef. Vdara will also be home to Silk Road, a restaurant described as "modern trans-ethnic"-which seems to cover all possible bases. And at the always elegant Mandarin Oriental, there'll be the Adam Tihany-designed Twist by Pierre Gagnaire-a "classic French with a modern spin" that's Gagnaire's first restaurant in the United States, along with the Asian-intensive MOzen Bistro, the Mandarin Bar on the 23rd floor (killer view!), and the Tea Lounge, adjacent to the Sky Lobby.

And, amazing as it might seem, the complex-a CityCenter the size of a city-is green. It uses water technology that saves 39 percent indoors and 60 percent outdoors. Limousines operated by the Center use compressed natural gas. More than 230,000 tons of construction waste have been recycled. I wish I could say that at CityCenter, the slots are sustainable and recycle your coins. But they don't. When it comes to gaming, as ever, you're on your own.