Arch. Myriam B. Mahiques Curriculum Vitae

Monday, November 22, 2010

The ultimate destiny of the Harmon Hotel in Las Vegas

Picture downloaded from lasvegasun.com
That´s a very bad story based on a building designed by arch. Lord Norman Foster. So many problems in the construction, and Building  And Safety inspectors are not approving the installation of rebars.
In consequence, the building should be shrinked or imploded. I´m so sorry to learn about it, after approximately one year of lawsuit.
¨Let´s see an excerpt from lasvegassun.com almost a year ago:
What if they had shorted the Empire State Building by a couple of football fields?
Or gave the Great Pyramid a flattop? Or built the Eiffel Platform?
Size certainly isn’t everything when it comes to buildings, of course. But the impact of many iconic structures is in their sheer stature. That is why it’s so startling — disappointing, even — that the Harmon hotel, CityCenter’s gateway to the Las Vegas Strip, has suddenly been cut down to about half its intended size.
Topping out at 28 stories instead of the proposed 49, the incredible shrinking Harmon seems unfortunately fated to look like a stubby, squashed stepchild next to its soaring CityCenter siblings, the 61-story Aria Resort & Casino and the 57-story Vdara condo-hotel.
That is the result of construction flaws — 15 floors of wrongly installed rebar — that forced MGM Mirage, which is developing the project with Dubai World, to rapidly call for a significant reduction of the nongaming boutique hotel. MGM Mirage canceled the Harmon’s 207-unit condominium component — the top half of the building — and postponed the opening of the hotel to late 2010.¨
Now, read the what´s going on in November 2010, from Las Vegas Review-Journal:
¨MGM Resorts officials, very quietly and with no public fanfare, want to demolish the unopened 27-story Harmon Hotel -- one of the components of its $8.5 billion CityCenter development.
But litigation and pinpointing blame for the troubled building will prevent anything from happening to the unfinished tower until late 2012.
In its recent third-quarter earnings statement, MGM Resorts said it took a $279 million noncash impairment charge for the Harmon and concluded "it is unlikely the Harmon will be completed using the building as it now stands."
MGM Resorts International operates CityCenter in a 50-50 joint venture with Dubai World.
In an interview this week, CityCenter Chief Executive Officer Bobby Baldwin said the company has hired two sets of structural engineers to determine the building's condition and what steps might be taken. MGM Resorts will bring in a third group of experts to analyze the building.
A report on the findings will be filed with the Clark County District Court, as part of CityCenter's lawsuit against Perini Building Co., the project's general contractor.
Perini will also be allowed to hire structural experts to assess the Harmon.
"Right now, I have a building I can't do anything with," said Baldwin, adding that Harmon has become "the poster child for nonconforming work worldwide."
Clark County Building Department officials will not allow any construction to be done to the Harmon, which was originally designed as a 47-story hotel and condominium tower.
In 2008, inspectors found structural work on the Harmon did not match building plans submitted to the county. The construction issues involved improperly placed steel reinforcing bar, commonly known as rebar.¨

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