MGM MIRAGE

Southwest Contractor's Las Vegas Owner of the Year

by Scott Blair

MGM MIRAGE has had an undeniable impact on the history of Las Vegas and has been at the forefront of many of the city's paradigm shifts. The Mirage Resort introduced the concept of high-end destination resorts in 1989.

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Treasure Island ushered the era of themed resorts to a new apex. But in the late 1990's the Bellagio turned away from blatant themes and embraced
a high-end design aesthetic, a trend which continues today.

With CityCenter, a $7 billion multi-use project, MGM Mirage hopes to introduce a new era of urban design to Las Vegas. "In this next evolutionary development we realized that here is the perfect time to displace the whole idea of the themed environment," said Sven Van Assche, vice president of design with MGM Mirage Design Group. "If it is themed at all, it is themed towards great architecture and design."

The company was born of a $6.4 billion merger in 2000 between MGM Grand Inc. and Mirage Resorts. With the 2004 merger the Mandalay Resort Group, MGM Mirage now owns 11 casino resorts in Las Vegas and 24 worldwide, and is the second largest gaming company in the world.

Most significantly, the company is the largest gaming industry landowner in Las Vegas with 800 acres, 300 of which are either undeveloped or underdeveloped, according to the company's 2005 annual report.

In addition to CityCenter, the company is also constructing the Signature at MGM Grand in a partnership with Aventura, Fla.-based Turnberry Associates, featuring three identical 38-story hotel/condo towers with 1,728 suites.

"MGM Mirage is a force beyond Las Vegas, and certainly a force within Vegas," said Joel D. Bergman, AIA, president of Bergman, Walls and Associates, the Las Vegas-based architect on all three Signature towers.

"Their apparent current direction is going to take the town in general and them specifically to a totally different level. It is part of the growth and transition, the thing that keeps Vegas vital and alive, and they are leading it."

One of the company's core philosophies is diversity, which has been carried into its construction projects through mentoring programs and joint venture opportunities for minority, women and disadvantaged business enterprises.

According to the MGM Mirage's 2005 Diversity Report, MWDBE construction expenditures in Clark County, Nev. increased from just under $6.7 million in 2001 to over $77 million in 2005.

"We've had five mentoring programs with minority-owned general contractors in the course of time that we've been with MGM Mirage," said Dick Rizzo, chairman of Perini Building Company. "That is because of their involvement and encouragement with the commitment to their diversity initiatives." Perini was selected as the general contractor for the CityCenter project, and previously on the MGM Grand Detroit Casino.

"We are implementing diversity programs and goals into every facet of the CityCenter project, from contractors to subcontractors to vendors to designers," Van Assche said. "It just makes good business sense because we are a company with diverse market range that is looking to attract the greatest diversity of customer that we can."

With CityCenter, MGM Mirage is introducing green building as a new initiative for the company. "They've taken a very forward look at sustainability and understand the impacts on their community for what they are building," said J.F. Finn, AIA, principal with Gensler of Nevada, the firm managing all design activities on the project. "They have expanded their sphere of influence from the perspective of how they look at things not just for a one- or five-year return on investment, but ten or twenty years."

"MGM Mirage has both the vision and commitment to convert a dream into a reality," said Brian Hicks, preconstruction services manager with Bomel Construction Co., the concrete contractor on several MGM parking structures. "They also have the entrepreneurial spirit that created Las Vegas in the first place."

With CityCenter, MGM Mirage sought visionary design firms who would exemplify the mixed urban environment. "We felt that we needed to hire different individuals to take ownership of those individual pieces and not have one utopian view of one singular entity or person," Van Assche said. "We took the separate entities and essentially assigned them separate programs and identities."

Selected architects include Cesar Pelli, Rafael Vinoly and Sir Norman Foster.

"Our mandate was to minimize the amount of parameters and not really give them a box: to let them run and see what they can do if you let their creative juices flow," Finn said.

CityCenter is scheduled to open in 2009, while the third Signature tower opens in May.

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