LAS VEGAS — Casino executives opened the newest and most expensive joint on the Las Vegas Strip on Wednesday night — a 4,000-room resort at the heart of the $8.5 billion CityCenter complex.
The 61-story Aria Resort &Casino was publicly unveiled before midnight with fireworks and fanfare, fitting for the heart of a project that has taken center stage in the struggling casino industry.
“This is really 21st century Las Vegas,” said architect Cesar Pelli, whose team designed Aria. “This is really setting up very high standards that will be very hard to match — but I hope they will try.”
About 5,000 VIPs streamed into Aria earlier in the evening for a gala, greeted by smiling cocktail servers with trays of Dom Perignon champagne and displays of hors d’oeuvres of caviar, seafood and other savory treats.
Models stood at aisleways and casino executives greeted guests, while hundreds streamed into a theater to watch a preview of an Elvis-themed Cirque du Soleil show to debut in February.
“It’s beautiful,” said 73-year-old retiree Bernard Bouley of Saint Jerome, Canada, about 30 miles from Montreal.
Bouley waited with a friend in a small park outside the Crystals mall, peering inside the doors to Aria’s lobby and glancing at the colorful fountains outside the resort’s main valet. The pair planned to enter once the casino opened.
“We just heard about it this morning,” Bouley said. “The guy on the bus told us it was opening tonight.”
Several hours earlier, CityCenter owners MGM Mirage and Dubai World thanked architects, employees and each other at a morning ceremony.
MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren, flanked by executives and employees of the Las Vegas-based company, then rang a bell used for prizefights at the MGM Grand to remotely close the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of MGM Mirage were unchanged at $10.35 Wednesday.
A Nevada gambling regulator last month likened CityCenter’s development to a 12-round boxing match, with the opening signifying its midpoint.
“I think clearly that that was the seventh-round bell. Our foe is weakening,” Murren told The Associated Press after hammering the bell 56 times. “Our foe — the economy, the recession, the financial crisis — our opponent is now the one that’s close to its knees, and we’re just gaining momentum and gaining strength.”
As CityCenter begins operating, it’s now up to its 12,000 employees to deliver an entertaining, exciting environment that makes guest want to keep coming back, Murren said.
“This is nothing if not for the people that work here,” he said.
Murren earlier told employees in an e-mail that the opening of Aria, which contains CityCenter’s only casino, will let tourists experience the development as it was envisioned, instead of in bits and pieces. Other parts of the 67-acre development opened earlier this month.
“This isn’t just another opening,” Murren said. “This is a game-changer.”
Once Aria opens, its rooms, along with those at CityCenter’s Mandarin Oriental and Vdara hotels, will increase room capacity on the Las Vegas Strip by 8.5 percent, UBS Investment Research analyst Robin Farley said.
Murren told the AP that investors have wondered whether CityCenter would finish, and now they want to know whether it can be successful in this economy without cannibalizing its other resorts.
MGM Mirage owns the most casinos on the Strip, but Murren believes CityCenter will help, not hurt, the company’s other resorts.
The room increase has competitors worried, as visitation to Las Vegas has decreased in the past two years as consumers spent less time and money traveling and gambling.
On Tuesday, a representative of the venerable Sahara hotel-casino less than three miles from CityCenter said it would shutter two of its towers until demand improves. A day earlier, Binion’s Gambling Hall &Hotel in downtown Las Vegas closed its 365 guest rooms and cut 100 jobs to cut costs.
Competitors worry that CityCenter brings immediate pressure to lower room rates to keep hotels filled. But Murren and other MGM Mirage officials predict CityCenter will help Las Vegas as a whole, spurring visitation and being a catalyst for long-term prosperity.
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