Never-opened Las Vegas hotel denied an explosive end

LAS VEGAS - One by one, the grand old dames of the Strip outlived their charms - the Dunes, Stardust and Aladdin - and down they came, thanks to some well-rigged dynamite, in a booming flash of bravado and showmanship that became this city’s staple - the implosion.

But not the Harmon. In Sin City parlance, the flawed edifice is like an aspiring showgirl given the old vaudevillian hook before even stepping on stage. The troubled hotel and condominium tower once envisioned as an anchor to the gleaming CityCenter complex will be dismantled slowly, tediously, floor by floor.

Never opened, the halfbuilt husk sits empty, shrinkwrapped in ads, kept intact as evidence in a high-stakes trial this fall to determine who’s responsible for the major design and construction defects experts say could topple the building in a major earthquake.

Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez has ordered that after opposing lawyers collect what evidence they can, the ill-fated project will be demolished. This time, the bitter end won’t come in a blaze of smoke and glory, but hidden from the gaze of curious eyes - a mistake the city wants to quickly forget.

“We don’t have a problem in Vegas with taking things down and building them anew. In fact, we’re known for it,” said Mark Hall-Patton, administrator of the Clark County Museum, which recently featured an exhibit of imploded casino hotels called “Lost Vegas.” “But the Harmon is something different.”

The gleaming Strip has gaps, the legacies of pricey projects gone bust. Amid the shining towers of chance are the reminders of economic failure, such as the unfinished condo high-rise between the Venetian and the Palazzo resorts. The building went into mothballs during the recent economic slowdown and is now covered with a million-dollar tarp to make it look finished and inviting.

Yet perhaps there is no greater bruise to this resort city’s ego than the Harmon. Co-owned by MGM Resorts International, the buildingwas once seen as the 49-floor centerpiece of the $8.5 billion CityCenter, the largest private commercial development in U.S. history. The project - a collection of commercial, hotel-casino and residential properties - includes the Aria, Vdara and Mandarin Oriental towers.

But in 2008 - a year before CityCenter’s opening - inspectors halted the Harmon’s construction at 26 stories because of faulty steel reinforcement columns that make up the support spine for each floor.

The move set off a volley of lawsuits between design engineers and contractors to determine how such a supposed jewel could become a civic safety hazard. Calling the Harmon a “monument of construction defects,” CityCenter officials insisted the building should be destroyed, reasoning that the tower could collapse in a strong earthquake - and predicted a 50 percent chance of such a temblor within 30 years.

After granting the request to dismantle the building, Gonzalez delayed the demolition date, ruling that for now the Harmon would stay up as a towering Exhibit A to the impending trial. The building is encased in a shimmering skin and appears normal to Strip passers-by, while the inside sits empty.

For many, the Harmon’s legacy will be tied to professional neglect. In 2009, the Las Vegas Sun exposed serious safety flaws at the CityCenter and other Las Vegas construction sitesand how safety regulators had failed to prevent accidents that killed 12 workers in 18 months - a rate of one every six weeks.

Half of those deaths took place at the CityCenter site, but none were specifically tied to the Harmon.

Las Vegas officials say the era’s flawed projects taught the city a hard lesson.

“It’s indicative of how fast the city was growing back then and the pressure everyone was under to do things even faster,” said Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, whose district includes City-Center. “We were working 24/7, cutting corners. What resulted is the nation’s highest rate of construction deaths and a Harmon that’s now just one giant billboard.”

Business, Pages 71 on 04/20/2014

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