Overdue: Mandarin Oriental Gala Pictorial

I think I was stricken last week with a bug going around called CityCenteritis, the fatigue that is setting in surrounding that little collection of buildings that's been in all the papers lately.

Still, the Mandarin Oriental gala opening on Dec. 4 was a great deal of fun. Another popular Vegas blogger who accompanied me shot a gazillion images that can be found here, but I prefer to use photos here to tell a story.

For instance, it was evidently wild couture night. Models were all over the place and here are some of the looks:

This party was spread across the 23rd floor Skylobby and the 3rd floor convention space, both of which are splendid. Yet while it was expected that the lobby would be lovely, we were particularly jazzed by how beautiful the convention hall is:


There was plenty of food and drink, as usual. A lot of the images below are, for some reason, of chocolate-related items. There was this whole chocolate-journey room with the Johnny Depp version of "Willie Wonka" playing. Yes, the creepy remake, not the happy one. But OK.


Nice of them to form the bread in the shape of an S for me.

We were welcomed to go to the 9th floor to have a tour of a typical room for which the rack rate is supposed to be, uh, $600. Yeah. Anyhow, they're very sleek and modern as all rooms tend to be nowadays:


There was one innovation I found kinda fun, the "valet closet." Basically, there's this closet that opens to the outside of the room and the inside. So the valet can drop off your dry-cleaning or a package and then a light comes on in the unit and you go to your side and get the items left. That wood panel to the right of the room number below is it from the hallway:


Small things. Anyhow, the lady who was showing us the room started to freak out when we wanted to bounce on the beds and take pictures of all sorts of minutae like valet closets, so she urged us to go to the 3rd floor where the "program" was about to start.

That "program" was Vanessa-Mae, the rock-n-roll violinist:


I would've stayed a little longer, but that other blogger was easily bored and wanted badly to go see the spa. We were put on an elevator and got off at the spa level expecting to be greeted by minders whose patience we would surely try. Instead, we found ourselves literally alone opening doors, wandering all over the facility and feeling like we were trespassing when, in fact, it seemed they wanted us to do this.

Here's the yoga/aerobics room:




Dunno what those metal thingies are, but that may explain why I had to rent a tux instead of wearing the one I got married in three years ago. I tried to shape up a little while we were there...

All sorts of wacky treatment rooms abound and the pick-your-shower thing looked fun:


My blogger pal was especially excited to check out the relaxation pools that he said were the only ones anywhere in Vegas or the US or the Milky Way (can't remember) that have windows and views.


Sadly, one of those precious views was of...

a neon McD's!

Next thing I know, I find my friend laying on one of these bed-like things. He's like, "Dude, try this," and I'm like, "Dude, do something else with that bottle, k?"


THEN I tried it out.


OK, OK. That photo didn't take itself. By this point in our maurauding, we came across a lovely guide who said it was great that we'd seen what we'd wanted to but did we have any questions. My bottle-fondling spa nerd friend sure did have some. I don't remember any of them being interesting, though.


That may be because I was causing trouble, as usual, by shooting stuff like this:


My friend and I decided to walk over to Crystals which is around the time, lucky for us all, both my iPhone and my proper digicam died. But not before I got this nice shot of the Veer Towers.


Oh, and this directional at the Crystals amused me...


in this sorta way:


The End. Or...the beginning? Hahaha! Yes, CityCenteritis makes you a little punchy. And that's just the start of The Week Aria Opens!

Busy Day Ahead...

Gotta dash off to KNPR now to join Dave Berns on State of Nevada from 9:40a-10a PT for chatter about Steve Wynn, CityCenter, Las Vegas Sun layoffs and, so I hear, what the Tiger Woods drama could mean for Vegas clubs. (I know, I know. I go where the host wants me to. Friesster = Media Whore.)

Then I need to finish an overdue Sphere.Com piece on, yes, CityCenter, before the Crystals media open house from noon-5. Plus, gotta rent me a tux for the Mandarin Oriental opening on Friday night -- this is Vegas, quickie tux rental should be easy, yes? -- and I've got a LVW column idea that'll also take a little legwork.

So I probably won't be able to blog much today, but I've been very efficient at approving comments, which is easier to do via iPhone than anything else on Blogger, and there've been loads of them so browse the site. And keep 'em coming.

And, also, please take a look at my largest and most significant CityCenter piece, the cover of L.A. Weekly. It's a 4,000-word examination of the premises of the project and raises some issues I have yet to see anyone discuss in this rah-rah period. The piece was edited by Drex Heikes, the editor who drove Ali Berzon's Pulitzer-winning package on CityCenter construction deaths at the Sun. He got out of dodge before the carnage, much to my benefit.

CityCenter, The Second Pictorial

Don't you just love that? That's the kind of fun stuff that gives me a thrill when I get to walk around a yet-unopened piece of new Vegas. Here's a closer look at this sign which, I'm sure, is already erected:


There it is, in one sign waiting neatly to be stood up and serve, most of CityCenter and its relationship to the Las Vegas Strip summed up in a directional.

I walked around again on Friday, my second tour in about 15 days as I finish up this weekend a major magazine piece on the project. It is impressive how much more cleaned up and polished the place looked and how many new angles I was able to see of these huge, gleaming buildings. Gleaming is a word you're going to see a lot in reference to CityCenter unless it's cloudy throughout December.

I was able to get into Mandarin Oriental for the first time to see the Sky Lobby. There was still a prohibition on taking any interior photos, but I did get some shots of its front porte cochere:


Here's Mandarin PR queen Alyssa Bushey's nifty construction helmut:


It's been said before by Hunter Hillegas of RateVegas.Com and others, but the 23rd floor Sky Lobby at Mandarin is going to be one happening bar. When I walked through, the bar staff was placing those pretty bottles of liquor on glass shelving behind the bar which, too, was in front of floor-to-ceiling windows.

I did ask whether average tourists would be allowed to just wander around the lobby and the answer was actually...not really. A reception person at the first floor will ask you what your business is. You can say you want to have a drink at the bar, but if you're not wearing appropriate attire -- read: those shorts and baseball cap I wore for my $21 burger at Trump last year won't cut it -- they can refuse you entry.

[Aside: VegasTripping.Com offered up this great link to a Mandarin Oriental spa designer's blog with images of what it will look like. It appears to be the first interiors of the space, so if you care, enjoy!]

One of the things I seek out when I'm in CityCenter are moments, angles and locations where I really feel like I could, if I squint the P-Ho out of the frame, imagine I'm really in Manhattan. There's a tall staircase that takes you down to the Mandarin's front door and check out these views looking down and up from the middle of it:


Right? You can see it, yeah? And this view straight up is arty:


There's a glass walkway across the front of CityCenter into the Crystals shopping area, and I thought these views from it were fun:


See, I'm not totally opposed to advertising on the side of buildings. That Gucci sign is hot. But it's also appropriate, not like this crap that MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren himself admitted to me in a recent interview he dislikes, too, but feels dutibound to accept (I still disagree):


One part of the exterior that is more available to see and photograph now versus two weeks ago is some of the public art pieces. For instance, here's the pocket park in the crook between Aria and Crystals where the Henry Moore sculpture sits:


In that image and the following one, we're facing the glass wall behind Aria's registration desk. Here's another view and if you click on it, you might be able to make out Maya Lin's silver -- and fantastic -- Colorado River sculpture:


In an interview I did with Nancy Rubins for this magazine piece I've got going on, she talked about how one of the reasons she wanted to do her soon-to-be-iconic boat-tree sculpture was for the chance to have it cantilever over the road. Here's the best shot I've gotten yet of how it does so:


This classic Claes Oldenburg piece is so whimsical and fun, too:


Finally, I thought the western view was worthwhile, too. As you may know, my father and I are invested in a condo unit in the left-most building you see below:


When that road opens, a flyover of I-15, it should make those buildings more accessible and, perhaps, more valuable as time goes on. Fingers crossed, anyhow.

Yes, I continue to withhold more extensive commentary about the interiors of the various buildings and I'm glad I have done so as some opinions I had two weeks ago have changed -- for better and for worse -- as things have become cleaned up, adorned, appointed and unwrapped. And until real people start flooding the property to actually use these spaces, it's hard to know if anyone's instincts about their functionality is accurate.

That said, I do hope everyone out there is enjoying and appreciating this special period we're in now. It's been a sad time with lots of bad news, and now we're in the throes of the run-up to something we won't see for a long, long time: A major opening. Whether you end up loving or hating CityCenter, I urge you to indulge in its moment. It will be over soon enough and there won't be a whole lot of Christmas Mornings like this for Las Vegas for years to come.

A CityCenter Tour Pictorial

I debated what image to use atop this post. I could have shown this cool one below, from the foot of Veer Tower...


...but as a Chinese friend of mine used to say when I lived in Beijing and took his photo with his camera, "Too much sky."

I could have picked this fun one, evidence that Cirque du Soleil is in da hood:


Or certainly, there's this view of the awesome Nancy Rubins suspended-canoes sculpture that is destined to become iconically identified with the $8.5 billion, 67-acre project:


But, alas, I kept coming back -- as I predict most will -- to the heart of it all, and the heart of CityCenter is the same as the heart of everything else in Vegas: The hotel-casino. And a pretty, gleaming, shimmery thing that is, huh?

Yes, I toured CityCenter more than 10 days ago. And I apologize for not posting all of this sooner except that I had a gazillion deadlines, 21 hours of poker to observe and a gag order about internal details of Aria and Vdara that was unofficially lifted when MGM Mirage let Norm Clarke go Tweeting every last detail he saw during a tour last Friday. Kinda silly that I can't talk about the poker-card-sculpture walls for Aria's poker room when Norm gets to describe the "over-sized Elvis belt buckles cover[ing] the exterior"of Viva Elvis and the showroom's "very high proscenium" and decor that "reflects the Elvis era at Kirk Kerkorian's The International rather than contemporary."

What I don't feel comfortable doing as yet, gag order or not, is judging the place. I have some first impressions -- CityCenter does not feel as crowded when you're in it as when you view it from afar, the artwork is really pretty terrific, Aria's casino is surprisingly dark and low-ceiling'd considering how much natural light pours in all over the rest of the place, the Crystals is so massive it runs the risk of feeling empty even when thousands of people are inside and I, unlike Hunter Hillegas of RateVegas.Com, find the poker-card sculpture thing cool -- but until the place is actually inhabited, it's hard to be fair. I did find it funny that Cirque waited so long to announce the name of Viva Elvis that the casino signage just says, "Elvis Theater."

Photography wasn't permitted on anyone's tours so far inside the buildings, but there was lots to look at from the outside, too. For instance, I'd seen the 23rd-floor (right?) sky lobby of the Mandarin Oriental from the Strip side, but there's a cut-out on the other side that I believe has some relevance to the electrical and a/c systems in the building.


The circuitous roads throughout the complex gave a bit of an airport terminal feel to the front of Aria:


...and I saw the train system that goes from Bellagio to Monte Carlo is getting tested:


Here's the side of the tram station, which is up there above, under the white canopy:


Some other random vistas are below, including a close-up of the side of Veer, a shot of where part of the swoopy roofing of the Crystals attaches, I think, to the northeastern part of Aria, the front of Aria from ground level and a view to the Strip from the same location:


That last one above looms over a "pocket park," a quiet sitting area where the Henry Moore reclining lady sculpture sits. I wasn't allowed to shoot that, but it was cute.

Clearly, there's still lots left to do before the Dec. 1-16 openings of the various components:


Check out the license plate on the scooter in the parking lot of the buildings along Frank Sinatra Drive where the CityCenter peeps are operating. Appropriate, given that half the place is owned by the UAE gang, right?


What I will say is that Steve Wynn routinely talks about his places having a series of moments that affect you emotionally. Even incomplete, CityCenter has that. And more than any other new project in Vegas probably since the Mirage, what they did here will be debated. And that debate should be fun to observe.

But before we go, just a little homage. See this?


See the orange thing peeking through? No matter how many times the MGM Mirage gang denies it, they succeed with CityCenter in part if they make Bellagio less relevant, less the center of gravity. And that's just a little sad, no?