MGM Resorts International told Clark County officials that the structurally troubled Harmon Tower, which was to anchor one end of the $8.5 billion CityCenter development on the Las Vegas strip, cannot be fixed and submitted a plan to implode the unfinished luxury hotel and condominium tower.
MGM Resorts was responding to a directive from the Clark County Building Department, which sought a solution to public safety concerns surrounding the Harmon. Last month, a structural engineering firm said the building could collapse in a major earthquake.
Perini Building Co., CityCenter's general contractor, maintains it can fix the Harmon.
"Perini agrees that the fastest way to end the dispute over responsibility to repair MGM's design errors would be to blow up the building and destroy the evidence," the company said in an email. "However, that would be far from the end of the dispute. MGM is seeking to implode the building to hide the fact that the Harmon is not a threat to public safety and to avoid having the repairs made that Perini and its third-party structural engineers have offered to do."
Construction defects have the building's immediate future held up in a Clark County District Court lawsuit between Perini and MGM Resorts, which is the operator and 50 percent owner of CityCenter.
