CityCenter Comes To Their Senses?

I know there's a ton of big Vegas news out there -- Kirk leaving MGM, Wynn's newest best friends being indicted, dipsticks finally getting their comeuppance -- but I've got a project to contend with so I can only handle minor blog posts right now. So thanks to Amy for lobbing this one right over my plate:


Could it be they're taking this monstrosity down?


Probably not. I predict they've just realized this one doesn't stay up right and, like a horror film monster, this thing will be back and uglier and more insulting to the Cesar Pelli than ever.

Aria Wrap Coming Apart At The Seams?

How long has this thing been up? A week? LOOK AT IT!


These were shot by Amy from Panorama Towers tonight. She didn't notice it this morning, so she thinks it might be intentional or that they're working on fixing something. But I just can't figure out how that could be; if they were peeling some of it off, would they send a crew out there to just pull at corners and leave them hanging?


What's interesting is that when I was at the Panorama condo on Monday, there was a chunk of the H that was missing. That's been fixed. So my hunch is that they've had trouble applying this wrap because the building surface isn't smooth. Part of the reason they got LEED Gold Certification for Aria was that the windows are designed with a small overhang above it that reduced the amount of sunlight gets into the rooms and, thus, reduced the A/C usage.

Here's another theory: Aria is uncomfortable with this desecration and humiliation as our dogs are when Miles tries to put a sweaters on them. The soul of the building is protesting, Mr. Murren. Set it free!

By the way, it occurs to me that MGM Resorts would've been wiser to wrap Vdara instead. It's not as prestigious a property, it actually faces south so as to face to California-to-Vegas-bound cars and -- added bonus! -- it could mitigate the sun glare from the Death Ray. And now there's another reason: The wrap would probably stick better.

Aria Wrap: Even Worse Than We Thought

That's it?

It appears the desecration of Aria is complete. And the outcome, if it is even possible, is worse than expected. "Elvis is in the Building"? With no further instructions? No reference to the name of the show? Just a sign that could also be hung on the Stratosphere (America Superstars), Harrah's ("Legends In Concert"), Bill's (Fat Elvis) and the Viva Las Vegas wedding chapel, among others?

There's no grace or beauty in the sign, either. This, remember, was what the VegasTripping gang had imagined this would look like:


THAT would have been more graceful and less visually off-putting.

But more importantly, they've now damaged the elegance of a world-class building and spent many thousands of dollars doing so. And the message is . . . unclear. Isn't the purpose of advertising to raise awareness of something? The sign MGM Resorts just put on Aria assumes you already know about the Viva Elvis show inside. But if you already know, what do you need the ad for? And if you don't know? Well, that sign doesn't scream, "Ooh, I gotta find out what that's all about!" does it?

Somehow I suspect most Vegas-goers think that there's some sort of Elvis something in every building on The Strip. Also, that it's tacky kitsch. Also, tourists don't see the back of this building all that much, so the billboard is only useful to drive-by traffic on I-15.

I just can't come up with any scenario where this make senses from the point of view of protecting or promoting a brand. These folks are just too cute by half.

Aria Wrap Disgrace Update: Elvis Is In The Building?

Panoramy just Tweeted this image, showing the second stripe of added to the Aria wrap. She's betting it'll say: "Elvis Is In The Building." And, she snarks, "(Wish he weren't ON the building.)"

Indeed. Sad. And, as Michael, a commenter on the prior Aria-related post, noted, they're doing THIS because they thought a proper marquee on the Strip was tacky and unsightly. Oh, the tangled intellectual webs they weave by staking out high ground without actually earning it.

The Desecration of Aria Has Begun!

So much for wishful thinking. Here the MGM Resorts geniuses go, defacing a beautiful building with a tacky wrap and proving to the world that Las Vegas does not deserve nor in any way appreciate the work of great architects.

Here's a close-up:


Any guesses what it's going to be? I would think "Viva Elvis" would be the most likely choice but the figures we can see so far don't look right for that.

Just a reminder, there's absolutely no evidence that wraps on the I-15 side of resorts do anything to drive business. MGM Resorts tried, in fact, to rent out the I-15 side of the Luxor a couple of years ago:


Nobody in the advertising world took that bait. That should tell them something about the actual value of the signs, and the trade-off in slapping bumper stickers all over their crown jewel. Sad.

[h/t for pix to Panoramy.]

A Good No-Sign For Aria?

Perhaps as a Christmas gift to good taste, prestigious architects, their own alleged high-class vision and this blog, look at what the MGM Resorts brain trust did over the weekend:


In case you haven't been following, this is what the same image looked like as of Dec. 19:


See that puzzling little star, the seeming beginnings of a hideous building wrap? It's gone!

I'd like to celebrate. I'd like to believe that someone over there suddenly scrounged up some respect for the artistic giants who designed that magnificent building. I'd like to think that maybe that little star was a multimillion-dollar version of when you or I slap a patch of paint on the wall to see how it looks.

Alas, I am not so trusting. In fact, I keep hearing MGM is about to wrap one of its resorts with an ad for a new TV show. Hopefully -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- it's the Luxor. That would be regrettable, too, because the Luxor is the only other building they own that is distinctive and architecturally interesting. But they've already done it a few times there, so it's hard to get worked up about it.

[h/t to PanorAmy for the pix.]

It's a Wrap, Speaking Of Damaging The Brand...

MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren was just talking about not wanting to damage his brand, but yesterday he began doodling on a starchitect's building, so it's hard to take him seriously, isn't it? Yup. That, above, is a sunrise shot of the beginnings of what is no doubt going to be a hideous wrap of Aria. That was shot by guest host Amy, and listener/reader Weston P. sent along this closer version:


I'm not the only one who hates this, of course. We shouldn't need to lecture MGM Resorts on the importance of respecting their architecture, but Weston thinks people should do so anyway:

I, for one, am disgusted by it. They began today and three glass panels now have wrapping on them. How can MGM go so low as to deface one of the prominent luxury hotels in our skyline for who knows how long?! Hopefully, they will receive a few harsh phone calls about this. I know I am going to do my best to talk to someone as this is, in my opinion, appalling.

Sing it, brother! Oh! Guess who else hates wraps? From last week's interview:

Friess: Would you ever put one of these advertising wraps on your resorts?
Steve Wynn: When hell froze over.
Friess: And why? Why wouldn't you do it?
Wynn: It's terrible, terrible looking. It's OK if you're running a Motel 6 or a low-end place like Circus Circus.
Friess: The county just gave MGM permission to put a wrap on Aria for their Viva Elvis show and I'm just really offended by this idea. I mean I took them seriously when they said they are doing something high class with their architecture and then they throw up bumper stickers all over it and it gives everybody who hates Vegas a chance to say, "Look at that."
Wynn: This is the same group that built the place. It's the same brain that built the place.

Meanwhile, the worst part is that what they appear to be putting on that gorgeous building looks even worse than we expected. This was the VegasTripping.Com mock-up:



The VT gang gave the MGM gang too much credit. That, above, would be stately and dignified compared to what they're actually doing.

This week's LVW: Cut the wrap, Aria

Thanks much to Chuck at VegasTripping.Com for generously allowing the Weekly to use this illustration of the potential defacing of Aria's west side. Here's hoping we can shame them into averting this short-sighted idea. Here's this week's column. -sf

Cut the wrap, Aria!
Ads seriously undercut design
By STEVE FRIESS

MGM Resorts brass made many pre-opening claims about CityCenter that were, in retrospect, ridiculous. CEO Jim Murren predicted the super-expensive mall would become a communal gathering place for locals who otherwise avoid the Strip, that there was something akin to Central Park somewhere in that 67-acre, concrete-steel-glass landscape, that opening the complex would single-handedly increase Vegas visitation this year by 7 percent.

But one of Murren’s assertions rang true: They had built a collection of ambitious structures designed by the world’s great architects, proving a commitment to high-brow culture that would make a serious statement about Vegas’ maturation. These were special buildings, to be treated with great respect and honor, their exterior magnificence CityCenter’s calling card to prove the sea change promised to those who ventured inside.

Yet, now comes word that Murren’s crown jewel, the glittery and gorgeous Aria, could succumb to the modern Strip’s worst aesthetic trend, The Wrap.

Please, Mr. Murren. Anything but that. I beg of you. Don’t do it.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You're building this beautiful and stately structure with perhaps the best international reputation for elegance, service and grace, and then you...


Put a wrap on it?!?!?

Please, please, please, please, please, Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas peeps. Tell me that's just there right now to gin up some interest in advance of the opening at CityCenter in December. Tell me that when you open, you're not going to make your building look like...


...this. Just sayin'.

And while I was stuck in traffic looking at that terrible scaffolding, I turned the other way and noticed that...


...the Paris balloon needs a paint job, stat. Has it had one in the 10 years the place has been open?

I did think that the sign for the Louis Vuitton at The Crystals was kinda cool and refined:



Well, at least until those neat severe angles of this Daniel Libeskind design get cluttered with all the other logos. This one works because the LV also has similar severe angles and, also, there's a double-entendre in there. But think they'll leave well enough alone? Really?

Finally, I've been eager to see what the Mandarin Oriental interiors will look like. The website still has what appear to be renderings of the rooms. I mean, it's hard to tell since they're tiny thumbnail images that can't be enlarged. The executive suite one, in fact, is a photo of a flower on a table with the base of a lamp.

BUT! This splash-page image, presumably of a lounge or restaurant, is insightful:


Look out the window! It turns out that the Mandarin Oriental Las Vegas is going to be...in some other city! With lots of glittery high-rises! How grand! I wonder if there'll be a shuttle of some sort!

Your Ad Here!!!

No, not here. Well, yeah, you can buy space on this evidently quite popular Vegas blog.

But today I spotted something I hoped and prayed was not what I thought it was. But then it turned out to be exactly what I thought it was. Take a look:


The Luxor, which has already sold their Strip/McCarran-facing side to Absolut vodka for a while in addition to promoting its own entertainment attractions, is now turning the ENTIRE pyramid into billboard space. Here's a closer look at what's there right now:


It's a viewfinder with the Welcome to Las Vegas sign in the middle. In other words, a placeholder. The gigantic equivalent of "YOUR AD HERE." Why not just write that? What, too tacky?

I quizzed Alan Feldman, the MGM Mirage spokesman, about this today. He was probably overwhelmed with media calls about the company's troubling fourth quarter loss -- and here's hoping he schooled some local reporters on what a "going concern" is before they get it wrong again -- but he replied via text message that, indeed, "all four sides are available." He also took the time to email me an article from the most recent MGM Mirage employee newsletter.

The article addresses both what's going on here and why they've decided to be abstract in the least subtle advertising format ever invented. I thought it might be interesting, so here it is:

Hard To Miss
The  “buzz” on the new exterior graphic at Luxor

LUXOR – They seemed to appear overnight. Giant images of a camcorder viewfinder trained on the famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign materialized late last week on two sides of the Luxor hotel. Drivers on both the I-15 and Las Vegas Boulevard no doubt noticed them. But did they understand them? Probably not, said Brad Goldberg, Vice President of Marketing at Luxor. And that’s ok. “It’s really designed to generate interest to potential advertisers and hopefully do more promotions on the exterior of the building,” Mr. Goldberg said. “The idea was, ‘Let’s make it thought-provoking and see what kind of interest we can generate.’” The camcorder graphics are a new promotion and partnership between Luxor and Skytag, an outdoor advertising firm that specializes in exterior building advertising. It’s the same company that did the LOVE Cirque du Soleil ads atop The Mirage and the Criss Angel ad currently on the front of Luxor. Tentative plans call for the images to be up for at least a month, perhaps longer. Stretching more than 20 stories high, they cover the south and west sides of the pyramid, which is largely new territory for advertisements, Mr. Goldberg said. “We’ve had a few images on the south side of the building before. We’ve never done anything on the west side. I’m hoping it will generate some additional interest on that side of the building,” he said. “We received a few calls from ad agencies even as they were still installing this, so it’s already working.” Aside from the revenue gained by selling
exterior building space for ads, the images often generate a lot of media attention. An outdoor ad for the NBA All-Star game a few years ago landed Luxor on the front page of the New York Times, Mr. Goldberg said. The hope is that these new graphics will garner similar coverage. “Our hotel is truly an iconic building in Las Vegas. Putting these images on that icon should certainly
attract some attention,” Mr. Goldberg said. “We’ll see what kind of buzz it generates."

I expressed surprise that the company would sell ads for things unrelated to anything going on inside the resort. That is, almost all wraps in Vegas to date have at least pimped out the building for a show or event occurring there. Feldman reminded me that the Luxor had done this before, and I remembered that, yes, they'd taken Absolut's money for this:


Feldman also noted that the Rio does it, too. It's true that the Rio did this...


...a couple years ago. But after that, Harrah's Vice President for Marketing Michael Weaver told me the company had decided never to do it again. "The signature shape and look of the building is part of the Rio's brand," Weaver said. "We feel we lose something if we do it too often and for products that don't belong to us." Thus, I believe they've wrapped largely with Penn & Teller stuff ever since. Not the best decision, but at least it's a boundary.

I suppose it's all just business and those of us who think it defaces the iconic nature of the buildings ought to mind our own business. But I wonder if the reason this irks me isn't just that they've turned this fabulous structure into huge billboards but rather that they turned them into EMPTY billboards. They can't even find advertisers in private? They can't just get the word out there quietly in the Madison Avenue world that the space facing the highway can be rented? They have to actually point out that there's nothing there yet?

And what if they can't rent it? What if it goes months and months without something up there, just like billboards in blighted neighborhoods do? Then it's just another vacancy, another emblem of Las Vegas' ongoing, disastrous slump. Forget quiet casino floors, closing showrooms and unsold condos. Hell, every time you pass that building by and there's no ad up, it will scream failure in a way that those others can barely approach. It's telling the world on the largest available canvas just deep in the shitter this town has sunken.