No, but I really wish I could when I read yet another story posing the boneheaded question, “Can CityCenter save Las Vegas?” The query is as dumb as the answer is obvious: No, it can’t. No one megaresort property can. CityCenter’s got enough challenges without being lumbered with the “Savior of the Strip” burden, thank you. The available data suggests that the best case scenario is — to paraphrase a line from Das Boot — it throws a shovelful of sand under our keel.
On the other hand, if –as the Forbes reporter posits — Aria is a-swarm with “hoards [sic] of gamblers,” that would explain why everybody else has been struggling: A crafty and secretive Jim Murren has been hoarding all the players. Jim, let thy people go!
“Look, Ma, it’s a movin’ crane! We shore don’t see many o’ them around here anymore!”
The one thing I think CC can do is save MGM, and not necessarily by being the ‘high end’ place on the strip, but rather moving the epicenter of the strip to sit firmly with CC and Bellagio. Time will tell whether it will, but by position, I think we’ve got a new center of the strip with Encore and MB being the ends.
I reluctantly have to agree that, once you get north of Desert Inn, you’re now in the “ghetto” of the Strip. For instance, I don’t think the Sahara is struggling because people balk at paying $36/night for a weekend room night; it’s because they balk at staying *at the Sahara.* Between failsinos (Crown Las Vegas, F-bleau) and underfunded ones, that stretch of the Strip has had more than its fair share of adversity.
In the “things that make you go hmmm” category. 2:11 in the official street dept. sign reads “City Center”.
I stayed at Circus Circus a couple of years ago when I was out in Las Vegas and it probably took me about 15 minutes or so to walk to Wynn (Encore was not open yet). Staying there for a couple of day made me feel somewhat isolated from the rest of the Strip.
Then you have Convention Center Drive Road, just north of Encore. With The Royal Resort, The Greek Isles and Las Vegas Marriott Suites on it there are some hotel rooms and that’s about it. If Nevada ever legalizes prostitution (I don’t think they should but as long as Oscar Goodman is the mayor you never know) this would be a great location for the “red light district” of Las Vegas.