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Dubai World may be teetering on the brink but one of the firm's key investment projects will roar to life in Las Vegas as a glittering $8.5 billion development is unveiled.
Even by the over-the-top standards that have made Sin City famous, the 18-million-square-foot CityCentre complex of hotels, condos and shops opening in the US Nevada gambling capital is unprecedented.
CityCentre, the most expensive privately funded construction project in American history, begins a staged launch to the public as the non-gaming 57-storey Vdara condo-hotel, the stately 47-storey Mandarin Oriental and the gargantuan Crystals shopping centre bows ahead of the December 16 grand opening of the 4,004-room casino-resort Aria.
The gleaming complex was built with the help of some $4 billion from Dubai World after high labour and fuel costs forced MGM Mirage to sell half of the equity in the project to the group.
Yet, while debt-ridden Dubai World is fighting for its life, MGM Mirage says CityCentre is essentially complete so their partner's financial woes won't impact the project.
"There is no impact to CityCentre or MGM Mirage as the project is fully-funded and management at MGM Mirage were very clever about the deal they structured with DW, protecting them from such an event as default," said Rich Moriarty, an industry analyst for Union Gaming Group. "MGM Mirage will have right of first refusal in the event the project is liquidated and MGM is responsible for any costs above and beyond the budget."
CityCentre comprises a cluster of gleaming glass-coated buildings on a scant 67 acres of prime real estate at the heart of the Las Vegas Strip immediately south of the famed Bellagio resort.
It is an attempt by MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren to fabricate urban density in the middle of a city that has largely known only suburban sprawl.
"I firmly believe this is different," Murren said. "It's not a resort in the middle of a parking lot. It's not an isolated building. It's an environment and that's intriguing to people.
"A lot of people that are going to come are going to be really very much pleased with the fact that they can park and wander around an extraordinarily efficient highly-engineered and designed environment."
What makes CityCentre different than its forebears in Las Vegas is that it was created and designed to be a livable urban space with 2,400 condo units available for sale in three different buildings, Vdara, Mandarin Oriental and leaning 37-floor
twin towers called Veer that open next year.
Only half of those have been reserved, though, owing to the collapse in the American financial and real estate markets, so Vdara in particular will largely function as a 1,500-room hotel.
MGM Mirage has lowered the prices of the units by as much as 30 per cent, but they still range from $350,000 for a studio to $9 million for a Mandarin Oriental penthouse.
Rather than build another Y-shaped resort tower, MGM Mirage recruited a dream team of architects including Rafael Vinoly, Daniel Libeskind, Cesar Pelli and Norman Foster. They also commissioned or acquired $40 million in public artwork including an 87-foot representation of the Colorado River made out of recycled silver by Maya Lin, the sculptress best known for the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C.
Other artists whose works dot the CityCentre campus include Henry Moore, Frank Stella, Richard Long and Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.
Another priority was eco-friendly construction and operations for which every building opening in December has achieved the highest certification, gold, from the US Green Building Council.
