The new CityCenter quarter in Las Vegas has become not only the most expensive construction project built with private funds in the history of the United States. It also turned out to be super-ecological, or, as it is now fashionable to call it, “green”.
The project received a certificate from the Green Building Council of the United States in the field of energy and environmental design (LEED) for an innovative approach to saving water, energy conservation, choice of materials and indoor air quality.
The first phase of the construction by the famous MGM MIRAGE group of a gigantic quarter, comparable in grandeur, according to the analytical center “Indicators of the Real Estate Market”, with the Moscow International Business Center “Moscow-Sita”, on 27 hectares with a total cost of about $9 billion was completed at the end of last year. CityCenter is located between the famous hotels “Bellagio” (whose singing fountains many remember from the film “Ocean’s Eleven”) and “Monte Carlo”. Phase 2 will eventually occupy the space behind: between the Monte Carlo and New York casinos.
It is clear that for the development of such a huge territory it had to be prepared – at the very least, the old buildings had to be torn down. Las Vegas is no stranger to this: the average life of a hotel here rarely exceeds a decade. After that, it is considered morally and materially obsolete. It is blown up (using a technology that collapses the building “into itself”), and a more modern one is erected on the vacated site. As one of the representatives of the Clark County Department of Architecture and Construction (which includes Las Vegas administratively) joked in a conversation with the editor-in-chief of the www.irn.ru portal, “I would plant explosives in hotels at the initial stage of construction, then it would be easier to demolish them, but the fire inspection, I’m afraid, will not support me.”
This fate befell, for example, the Boardwalk Hotel along with several other local businesses. But 80% of the materials from which it was built were used in the new construction. For example, during demolition, all stone debris was crushed into dust, which was used as filler in concrete and asphalt. Whole and broken glass was recycled for future use at CityCenter. Bathtubs, showers and other plumbing fixtures, lamps were sent to other regions and countries, where they will be installed and used again. Old curtains and carpets were used as packaging material for them. Wood, metal, glass, wood fiber and other materials – everything is collected on site, sorted and reused.