What you’re seeing is an over-the-shoulder peek at the new model home center for Project City Center in Las Vegas, to be built on the Strip-front parcel formerly occupied by the Boardwalk casino-hotel-resort, as well as behind the Monte Carlo and New York-New York properties — all owned by MGM-Mirage. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
The $24 million sales pavilion for the residential components of MGM Mirage’s $7 billion Project CityCenter isn’t your average model home community.
The nearly 30,000-square-foot pavilion, which opens today, is on the Strip between New York-New York and Monte Carlo.
With a spacious design, two different scale models of the CityCenter site, high-tech features and information about the project’s four residential developments, the sales pavilion is designed to give potential CityCenter owners a taste of what life will be like inside the 66-acre urban village.
“We’re using a number of audio visual tools and state of the art technology that will put the perspective buyer inside their residence and present to them information about CityCenter that they might not know,” said Tony Dennis, executive vice president of CityCenter’s residential division.
The sales pavilion, which is a temporary structure, has individual boutiques dedicated to CityCenter’s four residential developments; Vdara Condo Hotel, The Residences at Mandarin Oriental, Veer Tower and Residences at The Harmon. In total, CityCenter will encompass 2,700 residences.
The sales pavilion includes model units, floor plans, unit locations, interior design options and other details.
Project City Center (we can only hope this clunky name will be changed) is the kind of real estate development I’ve been waiting to see for more than twenty-five years: Residential, retail and commercial all in one structural footprint.
This is not a brand new idea. Rockefeller Center in New York combined retail and office spaces. Copley Place in Boston is a shopping mall with office towers above it, anchored by two hotels — all of it built on top of the Massachusetts Turnpike. By now, the mantra “mixed use” is intoned for every new condo project cooked up.
This is not enough. The ideal — at least my ideal — would be to create a structure that, at least in principle, one need never leave: Home, work, play, shopping, medical care, education, worship — every need of your life answered somewhere under that one roof. I’m not talking about an Arcology, a building one is intended not to leave, but simply a comprehensive experience of a city all under one roof.
This Project City Center will not do, but it takes bold strides in that direction. What it really is is a casino-hotel-resort that will make accommodations for semi-permanent residents. In making those accommodations, it becomes — and actually aspires to become — a city unto itself.
Not quite paradoxically, there is another such development in the works, the somewhat-less-clunkily-named Echelon Place. This is being built on the site of the soon-to-be-imploded Stardust. As with Project City Center, it will consist of multiple hotels and residential towers built above and connecting to a vast casino.
For reference: Vegas Today and Tomorrow has wonderfully detailed information, some of it based in rumors, about both Project City Center and Echelon Place.
It’s no accident that innovative development like this should happen on Las Vegas Boulevard. The dirt is dear — at least $4 million an acre before demolition costs. But the net profit per square inch of that dirt is potentially astronomical. Many of the properties on The Strip sit on immense parcels of land — Wynn Las Vegas is over 200 acres in extent — so, if these first two projects pay off, we can expect to see more, bigger and better.
And who would expect anything less from Las Vegas…?
Technorati Tags: real estate marketing
Dave Barnes says:
Some day “Project City Center” will be the same as “Rockefeller Center”.
Yes, as New York and Las Vegas are both “cities”.
They both have “mass transit”.
They both have the same restaurants (e.g., Nobu).
They both have illegal immigrants.
They both have airport(s).
Why, they are the same.
,dave
P.S. I hate captchas.
January 3, 2007 — 8:19 pm
NVmike says:
Geez. More units? Good luck selling them.
Have you been to Las Vegas recently? There’s a LOT of excess inventory … low-, mid- and high-priced, that’s not moving.
I was there 3 weeks ago and the landscape is littered with new, empty houses sporting banners promoting significant incentives. Also seemed to be quite a few halted construction projects.
January 5, 2007 — 2:51 am
jk says:
Hey! I just return from Vegas and conpared to the rest of the countries econmics and sales Las vegas is booming.The City Center is an awsome development and it is open and they are selling.
Look around a littler further,.
January 15, 2007 — 1:01 pm
Charles says:
90% of the first building to be put up for sale is already sold. The Las Vegas market isn’t like the rest of the country.
March 23, 2007 — 6:12 pm
karen and rick walker says:
all the talk about the city centre being a “green environment” will there still be smoking allowed in the hotels/condos and casinos??
January 18, 2008 — 1:50 pm