Alzheimer’s center will bear Gehry’s signature

Groundbreaking will begin later this year in downtown Las Vegas on a $100-million Frank Gehry-designed facility for outpatient treatment and research for Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases.

The Lou Ruvo Alzheimer’s Institute -- details of which will be announced today in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Conference Center -- will include a banquet hall to be used for fundraisers for brain disease research and other events.

The 55,000-square-foot facility, which bears Gehry’s signature curves and undulations, will also include 13 examination rooms, a “Museum of the Mind” and a Wolfgang Puck cafe.

Gehry, reached Friday at his Los Angeles headquarters, said the office and outpatient facilities will be housed in squared structures attached to the banquet hall space, which will be covered with undulating metal curves latticed with windows. He said that the windows will be specially treated to accommodate the hot Las Vegas sun and that the metal will also be treated to handle glare problems. “All that will be vetted,” he said.

“I look at it as a big trellis that covers the banquet hall, and the holes in the thing are glass -- it’s like a blanket with holes in it, I guess,” Gehry said. “And when you are in it, it will be like being inside a giant trellis.”

The project, slated for completion in 2008, will be funded by the Las Vegas-based nonprofit Keep Memory Alive Foundation for brain disease research. The organization was founded by Larry Ruvo, Nevada’s senior managing director for Miami-based Southern Wine and Spirits, a beverage distributor. It will be built on land deeded to the foundation by the city of Las Vegas as part of its 61-acre Union Park development.

The new building is to be named in memory of Ruvo’s father, who died of Alzheimer’s. Ruvo said Friday that he hopes groundbreaking will happen on his father’s birthday, Aug. 4, but that it will certainly occur by the end of this year.

Gehry said he accepted the project because of his 35-year history of supporting research for Huntington’s disease as a board member of the Santa Monica-based Hereditary Disease Foundation. “Alzheimer’s is sort of a cousin disease to Huntington’s, as is Parkinson’s,” Gehry said.

The facility will also serve as headquarters for two other organizations devoted to neurological and brain disorders, the Las Vegas Alzheimer’s Assn. and the Las Vegas Parkinson’s Disease Assn.

Ruvo recalled that Gehry at first rejected the project because he didn’t want to do business in a city known for gambling.

“I said to him, ‘Frank, you have slot machines in California -- that’s not a good excuse.’ ” Ruvo said with a laugh. “When he began designing the building, he never even took out a pencil until he talked to the doctors who would be using the facility. He was sensitive and understanding to giving the doctors what they needed.”