Pelli to Design Themeless Casino

MGM Mirage Inc. has hired Cesar Pelli to design a 4,000-room hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip that will serve as the centerpiece for the company’s $4.7-billion Project CityCenter development.

Unlike the faux castles, pyramids, jungles and city knockoffs that make up the giant themed resorts along the Strip, this project will be about the architecture, said Pelli, former dean of Yale University’s School of Architecture.

“When you don’t have a theme, the attraction of the building has to rest in the beauty of the architecture,” Pelli said.

Early plans envision two soaring glass towers of 60 stories. The use of glass, Pelli said, will give guests “extraordinary views” of the bustling Strip and the stark desert that lies in the distance.

Pegged as a four-star resort designed to fill the market between MGM’s Mirage and the high-end Bellagio, the new hotel will have a 150,000-square-foot casino, a 2,000-seat theater where MGM expects to launch another Cirque du Soleil production and 15 to 20 restaurants. MGM Mirage executives expect the cost to reach $2.5 billion.

The project is part of a vast development MGM Mirage launched in November that will include three smaller hotels, a 550,000-square-foot shopping complex and 1,650 condominium units.

Scheduled to open in 2009, the project will be located on 66 acres which now feature the small Boardwalk Hotel & Casino, a few scattered shops and mostly vacant space.

It will serve as a critical link between MGM’s Bellagio resort on the north and a series of company properties to the south, starting with the Monte Carlo, said Bobby Baldwin, chief executive of MGM’s Mirage Resorts division.

After the company completes its $7.9-billion purchase of Mandalay Resort Group in the coming weeks, it will control nearly 3 miles of continuous frontage -- and 21,000 hotel rooms -- on the west side of the Strip surrounding the development. When completed, the CityCenter properties will give MGM an additional 5,200 rooms along that stretch.

Pelli, known for such Southern California architectural icons as the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood and 777 Figueroa Tower in Los Angeles, is part of an architectural renaissance in Las Vegas. Walt Disney Concert Hall architect Frank Gehry is designing an Alzheimer’s disease research center in the gaming mecca.

Dave Hickey, an art critic and professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says it’s no surprise that well known architects have discovered Las Vegas.

“The chichi architects,” he said, “are going there because that’s where the big projects are getting built.”