ML - Vegas Magazine

2012 - Issue 3 - April/May

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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The Loizeaux family may soon take on its most controversial Las Vegas demolition yet. The story of the Harmon is by now well known. When engineers discovered faulty construction in the Sir Norman Foster-designed, non-gaming hotel, MGM assessed the situation carefully before deciding that it would top off the building at 28 stories instead of the originally planned 49. As Las Vegas Sun reporter and critic Joe Brown wrote in 2009, "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." The Harmon was an important element of CityCenter's total design, standing as it does on the Strip, where it was to welcome visitors to a new kind of Las Vegas experience. Instead, it sits unfinished, mired in litigation between MGM and the general contractor of CityCenter, Tutor Perini Corporation. Clark County offi- cials asked MGM for more information; a structural engineer told MGM the building would likely collapse in a strong earthquake; Tutor Perini wants a chance to fix it. In a letter to Clark County development ser- vices detailing how it would fix the problem, MGM wrote: "In order to ensure the most responsive and expedient method of abatement and removal of potential structural hazards... the technical approach uses implosive demoli- tion means for the removal of Harmon Tower." Given its proximity to the Strip, Crystals, and the Cosmopolitan, this raises questions about safety. Experts say, however, that it can be done. "It's just going to be much more exacting work," Opfer says. "To protect Crystals, safety catch platforms may need to be built to help contain debris. Also, the building will fall more toward Las Vegas Boulevard and Harmon Avenue, necessitating closure of these streets during the implosion and immediately after to allow cleanup. It's doable. They've taken down build- ings with other technical challenges, and they can certainly do this." If history is a guide, this fallow period will pass in a few years and another building boom will resume. "If the economy were to change and money were available and people became confi- dent in a new investment, we could see it again," Feldman of MGM Resorts International says, knowing that a building boom could bring about the demolition of some historic hotels. "There are places that would be well-served by clearing out the land and starting anew. As long as we have change. That's most important." V The countdown: numbers 10 to 1, then a plunger sequence, illuminate the face of the Frontier, signaling the start of the implosion. The first charges send expensive sequencing equipment down a zipline to safety. The building drops from north to south at 19,600 feet per second. Cabling tightens and drags the far south wall down. The spectacle ends in a cloud of dust just 12 seconds later. vEGASMAGAzINE.COM 105 KA-BOOOOM! WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIREWORKS, WHEN BUILDINGS COME DOWN IN LAS VEGAS. The New Frontier, the Strip's second-ever casino, was imploded by Controlled Demolition at 2:30 am on November 13, 2007. The process starts a few weeks before the implosion. Clauss Construction guts the building to get rid of drywall, carpet, pipes, and other nonrecyclable materials. Walls made of concrete blocks and reinforcing steel bars are weakened, removing selected sections to allow the building to collapse as planned. Prep crews drill 6,500 holes in 16 support walls on the "shot floors" (ground, second, third, seventh, and 10th), and install steel cables from an elevator shaft to the southern exterior wall on the fourth and eighth floors to assist in pulling that "hinge" wall inward as the balance of the structure fails. Five days before the implosion, 1,220 pounds of high-velocity dynamite are delivered. The explosives are loaded into the pre-drilled holes, wired together, and wrapped with chain link and geo-textile fabric to contain the debris. 2:30 am: 3,500 pounds of fireworks go off in just six minutes. Remote-operated electronics are used to choreograph the pyrotechnics. PHOTOGRAPHY BY DENISE TRUSCELLO/WIRE IMAGE

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