How Much Does CityCenter Cost? Nobody Seems To Know

You might recall a while back I puzzled over the size of CityCenter. Is it 67 acres? 66? 76? MGM Mirage settled that with a statement that they were going with 76 acres and since they get to draw the boundaries on their own property, 76 it is. Has a patriotic ring to it, too.

But how much is CityCenter costing? Several reports yesterday about the shorning and delaying of The Harmon now-not-condo project used a variety of figures.

A little history. Project CityCenter started out at $5 billion, way back when it was first announced in September 2005. It became $6 billion by February 2006 when they added another 1,000 condo units, mainly because Vdara grew larger. About a week later, it became $7 billion when some infrastructure costs were added in. By earlier this year, the highly credible Bloomberg News started using $11.2 billion. It's also a figure I've used. Yesterday, Robin Leach decided it's $13 billion, a figure nobody has ever officially suggested. In fact, the link at the end of Robin's post is to a Las Vegas Sun story that uses $9.2 billion.

It's not just journalistic confusion, though. Nobody actually knows for sure. Here's an emailed statement I got from MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman this morning: "The safest apples-to-apples would be our previously stated $9.2b less the just announced $600m in savings."

Uh, OK. So now it's officially $8.6 billion?

I called Feldman. Yes, $8.6 billion is now the official number. But what does he mean, apples-to-apples?

"The reason why you have big differences is like $9 billion and $11 billion is because the $11 billion includes things that the $9 billion never included. Bloomberg uses $11 billion because at one point that appeared in a filing because there was a valuation placed on land. It was speaking about the value of the project, not the cost of the project."

In other words, that 76 acres is seen to be worth about $2 billion. That makes sense in 2007 or early 2008, anyhow, after the Elad fools paid $1.2 billion for the Frontier's 35 acres in a less desirable location. It's probably come down since then but is academic anyway because nobody's selling the land under CityCenter. Yet, anyway.

Feldman went on: "This is a number that you need to understand is moving. We continue to bid stuff, we continue to get new pricing. We talk about these numbers as if they're fixed but they're really not."

Understood. But $13 billion?

"I have no idea where Robin got that number. Respectfully, I've never heard it."

Keep in mind, Robin was the guy who pegged the Treasure Island sale before anyone. So maybe he knows something.