This was the press conference that answered a resounding Yes to the question, Can an attractive model really carry a major production? It can if it's a model of Project CityCenter—MGM-Mirage's 66-acre blockbuster of a mixed-use project on the Strip, between Bellagio and the Monte Carlo.
Before last Thursday's press gathering, audiences may have had a hard time grasping just how big, how dense, how ambitious the project really is. Sure, it's had some impressive numbers attached to it since being announced in November—66 acres, $5 billion, three hotels, a thousand-plus condos—but what do those figures mean on the 21st-century Strip, where even ugly buildings cost 10 figures? Vegas' steroidal real-estate market drains the wow factor from numbers we used to be amazed by.
So three thumbs up for the model, clearly the year's best performance by a plastic facsimile in a promotional role. Thanks to its deft use of three dimensions, the model made instantly clear just how big the damn thing is, how many buildings you can put up for $5 billion, how much of a city within a city it's trying to be. In a press conference filled with achingly predictable dialogue ("This changes forever the way our company will approach development"), the model was, well, a model of low-key eloquence: Life in these parts, it seemed to suggest, is in for a change.
If nothing else, CityCenter advances the essential Vegas art of getting creatively carried away. Let Steve Wynn build a swank casino; MGM-Mirage will build three: a 4,000-room number complete with casino, plus two smaller, nongaming hotels. And let's add 500,000 square feet of retail! And a couple of condo towers! And a go-cart track! (OK, that's me getting carried away, but why not?)
And to design it all, why not bring in enough big-deal architects to fill an issue of The Journal of Big-Deal Architects: Cesar Pelli, Sir Norman Foster, Rafael Vinoly, Adam Tihany, James KM Cheng, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. From the designs available last week ("This is a 20-month design process," advised Mirage Resorts President Bobby Baldwin, "and we're in month nine"), CityCenter furthers the move away from Vegas cartoonitecture most recently demonstrated by Wynn Las Vegas. These architects didn't make their names by doing theme design. Cheng's condo stack is a good indicator of what's to come: a tall, gracefully twisting rectangle that wouldn't look out of place on the better streets of Manhattan. Look for the aesthetic to be clean-lined and contemporary.
Like any good press conference, this one exuded big-picture vision (predictions that CityCenter would revise the way high-end development is done here) while skillfully pre-empting tougher questions with adequate-for-now answers. Traffic, for example: Exactly how do you pour thousands of workers and tens of thousands of visitors onto one property without congesting the Strip? The official response is something like, "We're working with county transportation officials," which is press-conference speak for We'll get back to you on that.
And what of Downtown? It was a mild irony that this press conference took place on a Thursday, the day Mayor Oscar Goodman usually meets the press to deliver another perky update on Downtown redevelopment. MGM-Mirage recognizes that, Goodman's cheerleading notwithstanding, Vegas doesn't have a genuine civic core yet. By excerpting the best parts of the downtown ideal—urban density, soaring buildings, stores you can walk to, cultural stuff—without the shabby buildings and lower classes of an actual downtown, could CityCenter wind up making Downtown somewhat beside the point?
Perhaps that's a question for the sequel to this press conference. Until then, this one—filled with video highlights, accessible corporate suits and a cool model—will do nicely.