Interview by James S. Russell
(Bloomberg) — If James Murren, the chairman and chief executive officer of MGM Mirage, needs any reminder of the dire state of Las Vegas, he doesn't have far to go.
Standing forlornly next door to CityCenter, the glittering new mega-resort his company co-owns with state entity Dubai World, is the defaulted, unfinished Cosmopolitan casino.
CityCenter, which at $8.5 billion and 18 million square feet is by far the largest development Las Vegas has ever seen, opened this month as the city's two-year recession showed signs of easing. Yet the complex is a long shot by any measure.
I spoke to Murren, a youthful 48 with a touch of gray, while sitting at a boardroom-size table in his grand private office within the faux Tuscan splendor of the Bellagio Resort. From here he runs the 20 properties MGM Mirage owns or has investments in.
Bringing in six celebrity architects to design CityCenter was Murren's brainchild. Their sleek, glistening buildings are supposed to lure the free-spending visitors necessary to reduce MGM Mirage's $13 billion in long-term debt.
I asked Murren, who once considered a career in architecture, how big-name architects figured into a city defined by fantasy and spectacle.
"In 2004, we were looking at how to develop the 67 prime acres we had between the Bellagio and Monte Carlo resorts. We were seeing designs for one theme hotel after another. It was a big yawn."
Murren said that while attending Trinity College in the "troubled, decaying" city of Hartford, Connecticut, he interned at agencies that helped house people. He also swooned over Rome during a college-sponsored sojourn.
'Magical Time'
"That was a magical time," he said, and one when the profession of architecture tempted him. "I wanted to examine the livability of cities."For CityCenter, he said he also drew inspiration from the design competitions for the World Trade Center. Daniel Libeskind, whose masterplan became the basis for Ground Zero's redevelopment, agreed to design Crystals, CityCenter's shopping mall. Two other Ground Zero competitors, Rafael Vinoly and Norman Foster, designed hotels at CityCenter.
The area devastated on 9/11 was well-known to Murren, whose career path actually took him to Wall Street. He rose to director of research and managing director at Deutsche Bank before joining MGM Mirage as chief financial officer in 1998. His wife, Heather, was the managing director for global securities research and economics at Merrill Lynch & Co.
"I knew that world-class architects could make an experience that was meaningful and immersing," Murren said. He wanted a high-density plan, with a mix of residences and hotels.
Radical Notion
He was determined that the development would be less like a hermetic blob on a highway strip and more public. He advanced the radical notion—at least in Las Vegas—that people might enjoy walking. He added $40 million in art."I overlaid a significant public-art program to appeal both to tourists and people who live here," Murren said. He demanded green design and management techniques, though they get a distinctive spin in a city devoted to heedless spending.
Slot machines are energy efficient, acres of glass are protected by shading horizontal fins, and the limo fleet runs on natural gas.
After Frank Gehry turned him down, Murren rounded out his design team with Manhattan's Kohn Pedersen Fox, Chicago's Murphy/Jahn, the New Haven firm of Pelli Clarke Pelli, and Gensler, a large international architecture and consulting firm hired to deal with the egos involved.
"They all took us to places we couldn't imagine," he said.
'Rugged Year'
How does he make CityCenter work in this economy? "It's been a really rugged year, but 35 million tourists will still come. CityCenter will act as a catalyst. Visitation has grown 10 to 20 percent after a significant project opens up.""International tourists are coming because America is on sale. We have a larger share of the Asian market in our portfolio."
Asked about prospects for Las Vegas, Murren says "there's unlikely to be any major new development in the next five years. Everyone needs to lick their wounds, heal, and reduce leverage."
He remains bullish on the city: "You can get things done here at a speed that other places can't imagine. Eight years after 9/11, New York hasn't got the 11 million square feet of Ground Zero rebuilding done. Here we proposed 18 million square feet in 2004 and we opened it in 2009."
(James S. Russell is Bloomberg's U.S. architecture critic. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: James S. Russell in New York at jamesrussell@earthlink.net.
