Vegas Magazine - Niche Media - There is a place beyond the crowds, beyond the ropes, where dreams are realized and success is celebrated. You are invited.
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After the fall of the Desert Inn, Wynn Las Vegas rose in its place. "It's 100 percent speed, pedal-to-the-metal all the time," he says. In Vegas, he says, casino oper- ators are consummate risk managers and data hounds, which makes sense if you consider their use of slight mathematical advantages to generate enor- mous profits. "What's impressive in Vegas is the property owners' understanding of time," he says. "They know what a slot machine is making at 3 am on a Wednesday." Armed with this knowledge, plus other vari- ables such as interest rates and current and projected room rates, they know when to take a building down and when to put another one up. Loizeaux marveled at Wynn's reported deci- sion to build a parking structure at the Wynn casino knowing he would take it down in just four years to make room for Encore. boggling," Loizeaux The once mobbed-up Desert Inn made way for Wynn, the name- sake of a casino boss who was by now something of a demolition afi- cionado. And the Boardwalk Hotel & Casino was imploded in 2006 to CityCenter. E ven when a building was demolished without dazzling replacement in the works, the destruc- a tion added to the city's mystique. Controlled Demolition's Loizeaux says imploding the slender Landmark, with its 31 stories and revolving restaurant on top, posed a significant engineering challenge in 1995. That implosion also became part of a movie: the some- what forgettable Mars Attacks! "Las Vegas has done quite a public The 28-story Harmon may star in Las Vegas's next implosion spectacle. service for Hollywood in allowing what we call 'progress' to be filmed and become part of cinematic history," says Gordon Absher of MGM Resorts. The demolition of the 166-room Bourbon Street Hotel & Casino by Harrah's in 2006, and the Stardust and the New Frontier in 2007, did not beget progress. Indeed, they could be seen as por- tentous symbols of the coming recession. Boyd Gaming destroyed the Stardust to build the multi- billion-dollar resort Echelon, but halted construction in 2008. This left a concrete husk that is now the eyesore revelers at Encore Beach Club are treated to while lounging in their cabanas. The New Frontier was meant to become a hotel modeled after the Plaza in New York, but it 104 VEGASMAGAzINE.COM Given its proximity to the Strip, Crystals, and The Cosmopolitan, a Harmon implosion raises questions about safety. remains an empty lot. And with that, the implo- sion-as-extravaganza era ended. Without financing or demand for a new mega-resort, there's no need for an implosion any time soon, save perhaps the Harmon. Loizeaux says his company has done thou- sands of implosions worldwide in its 65-year history, but there's nothing quite like Vegas. cede its place to W it, hen there's need for the a speed, implosion is usu- ally best option. But how do you destroy a building? And how do you do it safely? "Gravity," Loizeaux says. "If you pick up a pencil and let go of it's going down. There are immutable laws of physics." The specifics are, of course, complex, but in broad terms, it's simple: Use the smallest amount of explosives to eliminate the struc- ture's ability to carry its mass. Neil Opfer, an associate professor of construction management at UNLV, sums up the technique: "If we can weaken a building at critical junctures and put explosives in there to knock out the columns, we can have the build- ing fall in on itself." Loizeaux adds, "More important than the engineering is the experi- ence. You can plan an operation down to the 'T,' but scalpel." it depends on the guy holding the Stacey Loizeaux further explains how "sim- ple" the process is. "The older structures in Las Vegas are very stout," she says. "But the instant you force them to move, and get the supporting members out of plumb, they quite literally fall apart like a house of cards." the "It's mind- says. commitment are "No place else on the planet do you see this kind of thinking. The speed and just amazing." PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE MARCUS/LAS VEGAS SUN (DESERT INN); ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES (HARMON)