Judge says demolition can proceed soon
The long, sad story of the Harmon Hotel in Las Vegas is about to end. The never-opened, never-occupied tower at CityCenter in Sin City will not go out with a bang, like former resorts that were imploded as a form of public entertainment. Instead, the structurally flawed Harmon will be dismantled, piece by piece, the Las Vegas Sun reports.
Clark County District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez, who has overseen multiple lawsuits and countersuits regarding the property, has ordered that the tower be demolished as soon as teams of lawyers finish their respective investigations.
Co-owned by MGM Resorts International, the building was planned as a 49-floor center of CityCenter, at $8.5 billion the largest private commercial development in U.S. history. But in 2008, inspectors halted the Harmon’s construction at 26 stories because of inadequate rebar placement. Rebar provides the support that holds up each floor. Engineers then determined that the hotel tower would likely be unsafe in an earthquake. With that, the finger-pointing and the lawsuits began.
CityCenter said the project was a total loss. The contractor, Tutor Perini, insisted the project could be fixed, and accused CityCenter of wanted to cut its losses because of the recession.
In 2009, the Sun reported that safety flaws at the CityCenter and other Las Vegas construction sites had led to the deaths of 12 workers in 18 months. Half of those deaths took place at the CityCenter site, but none was specifically tied to the Harmon.
“It’s indicative of how fast the city was growing back then and the pressure everyone was under to do things even faster,” said county Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, whose district includes CityCenter. “We were working 24/7, cutting corners. What resulted is the nation’s highest rate of construction deaths and a Harmon that’s now just one giant billboard.”
Implosions are a thing of the past, said Mark Hall-Patton of the Clark County Museum. “They want it to come down in a controlled fashion rather than having it slop down to its side,” he said. As for the Harmon, “There’s no room for error. It’s not going to be easy to get it down without harming something on its side.”
