Harmon hotel, the most ill-starred of the "CityCenter six-pack" has been sitting empty since the completion of its exterior. The discovery of defective rebar and concrete reinforcement, which compromised the structure’s load-bearing capabilities, led to the $279 million tower’s truncation and subsequent mothballing.
The ongoing war of words between MGM Resorts International and general contractor Tutor Perini heated up again in July. At that time, consultants Weidlinger Associates disclosed "it would take at least one year to figure out what kind of repairs would be required to save the tower," according to Oskar Garcia of The Associated Press. Weidlinger’s report declared, "In a code-level earthquake … it is likely that critical structural members in the tower will fail and become incapable of supporting gravity loads, leading to a partial or complete collapse of the tower."
That was all MGM needed to hear. It informed Clark County on Aug. 15 of its intention to implode the Harmon. Even were MGM to get its wish today, the Harmon would be a Strip eyesore well into the summer of 2012. Six months would be required for demolition, with another five months spent removing debris.
But the Harmon will be around longer than that. For obvious reasons (279 million of them, in fact), Perini opposes demolition, saying the structure is sound and easily, inexpensively repairable. "MGM is looking out for its own economic interests and trying to shift responsibility for its business decisions and its own engineer’s design errors onto Perini and its subcontractors," ran a company statement. "There is no question that MGM had buyer’s remorse in moving forward with the gigantic CityCenter project during the dramatic downturn in the real estate market in Las Vegas." Perini furthermore accused MGM of trying to destroy the evidence of its (MGM’s) own incompetence by demolishing the tower.
MGM fired back, saying it would take as much as four and a half years to test, redesign and properly complete the Harmon (placing its long-delayed opening sometime in early 2016). Casino spokesman Gordon Absher got off the best shot of the verbal sniping when he told the Las Vegas Sun that "Perini’s continued requests to fix the Harmon is like the director of Ishtar demanding a sequel." Zing!
Since the Harmon is the causus belli of a lawsuit between MGM and Perini, it will almost certainly have to be preserved until that litigation plays itself out in the courts – adding additional years to the Harmon completion-vs.-demolition timeline. (It took from 1999 to 2005 to resolve construction-defect lawsuits at The Venetian.) In the meantime, the county wants more information from MGM as to how exactly it proposes to dismantle the 49-story tower, which is wedged snugly into the adjacent Crystals mall and only a street’s width away from The Cosmopolitan.
Who’s to blame? We may never know. The overwhelming probability is that MGM and Perini will reach a settlement in which the matter of culpability is swept under the nearest carpet. Only 0.02% of construction-defect cases go to trial.
