First the good news: CityCenter is on schedule to open this Dec. 16. Actually, one CityCenter component, the Mandarin Oriental hotel, comes on line Dec. 4, followed 12 days later by the Aria casino-hotel, and the Vdara and Veer condo-hotels. The lone exception is The Harmon, a hotel plagued with severe construction issues.
Reinforcing steel (aka "rebar") was installed incorrectly and in some instances severed during construction of The Harmon. This means the structure couldn't support its planned 49-story height. (It will now be 28 stories tall.) Third-party inspectors are charged with skimping on, and possibly falsifying, construction reports. The truncated, reworked Harmon will now open sometime in late 2010 – one year behind schedule.
The picture is murkier at Fontainebleau, which is currently in bankruptcy and is the subject of a plethora of lawsuits and counter-suits. The project's financiers, who have become fed up with its cost overruns, are fighting for control of Fontainebleau with developer Jeffrey Soffer. The latter accuses the banks of putting his project into default for ulterior motives – lead lender Deutsche Bank also owns the Cosmopolitan.
Although work at Fontainebleau seemed to be proceeding at a snail's pace, Soffer's people publicly maintained it would open in October (while privately conceding they couldn't make the deadline). At present, the suspended Fontainebleau is 70% complete and all bookings scheduled through June 2010 have been canceled.
Until construction resumes, there's no way of knowing how long it will be before Fontainebleau is finished. Once it is, you'll be able to see at least $5.2 million worth of fine art. That's how much Soffer invested in books, paintings and objets d'art. According to the Wall Street Journal: "There are paintings that go by names like 'Magical Space Forms,' 'Chakra,' 'Good and Bad Government' and last, but certainly not least, 'Double Orange Coney Island Vodou.' The sculptures have titles that are just as trippy and are even more pricey, like a $1.3 million set known as Venus Bleau (perhaps commissioned especially for the hotel) and 'A Gift From The Earth,' which is valued at $1 million."
If Soffer doesn't finish Fontainebleau, he can always hold a heckuva garage sale.
Cosmopolitan has been in shutdown mode, too, but it got a shot in the arm this week. Deutsche Bank, which bought the condo-hotel out of bankruptcy for $1 billion, has named former Caesars Palace General Manager John Unwin to be CEO of the Cosmo. It also projected a September 2010 opening date for the 3,000-unit property, which has gone $2.4 billion over its $1.5 billion budget.
It briefly looked as though the Cosmo would debut as a Hilton "Denizen" hotel. However, that new high-end brand went into the deep freeze in April after Starwood Hotels & Resorts charged Hilton with intellectual-property theft. Deutsche Bank remains affiliated with Hilton, though, and may open the Cosmo as a Conrad-branded hotel.
