Luxe Life Blog

Aria opens today with $128 million in cashier’s cage

Posted December 16, 2009 • 1:07 p.m.

Aria at CityCenter.

Photo: Kirvin Doak Communications

It’s taken five years, more than $8 billion of investment and hundreds of thousands of hours by 9,000 dedicated construction workers. Finally, tonight the crown jewel of MGM’s mammoth, sprawling 67-acre CityCenter opens its doors with a stunning and spectacular 11 p.m. fireworks display, and the public will get its first look at the 4,000-room Aria, the epicenter of the new city within our city.

However, just before that officially happens, Nevada Gaming Control Board officials have to be satisfied that MGM has sufficient cash on hand in the unlikely event that if every person playing slot machines or table games suddenly wins simultaneously, they can all be paid at once in cash.

It’s a quirky rule using a mathematical average of the number of slots and table games in play with winners that’s still enforced at every new casino opening. It ensures that there’s full confidence that all winners get paid even with a run on the bank. So you might break the bank at Monte Carlo, as the old expression goes, but it ain’t going to happen in Las Vegas, the world’s gaming mecca.

Accordingly, CityCenter head honcho Bobby Baldwin told me that sometime today, $128 million in cash will be loaded into the cashier’s cages at Aria. He’ll be ready to pay out $8 million for slot winners and $120 million for blackjack , baccarat and craps winners even if they all cash out simultaneously. Once the NGCB is satisfied that the greens, the readies, the Benjamins and the Washingtons are clean, crisp and available for such an improbable payout, they’ll authorize the doors opened for play.

Meantime, news of today’s Aria opening and the entire CityCenter extravaganza -- the largest privately funded complex ever built in America -- will be beamed across the world thanks to CNN. The 24-hour news operation has seven camera crews and satellite trucks in place for all-day broadcasting on CNN International, CNN Headline News and CNN here across America.

Bill Doak, the PR guru working with MGM on all the media liaison and today’s opening-day coverage, told me yesterday: “We have over 400 TV crews, reporters, writers and photographers from as far afield as Korea to Germany, plus all of the coverage you’d expect here in the United States and Canada. When we sat down in August to plan this, we projected that CityCenter and Aria would hit a target of 1 billion impressions through the opening. We have already exceeded that even before Aria opens! It’s a tremendous accomplishment and puts Vegas with massive favorable coverage back on the map right around the world.”

We ran a five-part series on CityCenter that included the 61-story Aria and the adjoining Crystals promenade of superstores last month. The Vdara Hotel & Spa opened Dec. 1, Crystals opened Dec. 3, and the Mandarin Oriental opened Dec. 4. Now the Aria opens tonight, occupancy in the twin leaning Veer Towers of condos begins in mid-January, and the 400 super luxury boutique Harmon Hotel is scheduled to open in late 2010.

Aria , the fourth super-structure to open within 15 days, features 4,004 rooms, of which 568 are high-roller Sky Suites, more than 150,000 square feet of casino gaming, a ginormous 215,000-square-foot pool area with 50 cabanas and an 80,000-square-foot spa with 62 individual rooms. In addition to the Cirque du Soleil Viva Elvis Theater, Aria has 10 bars and lounges and 16 restaurants -- many of the star chefs thankfully are good friends of mine. They include my longtime Manhattan restaurateur friend, the beloved Sirio Maccioni, who flew in yesterday for today’s opening, the brilliant Jean-Georges Vongerichten and his shimmering steakhouse and Michael Mina with his new American Fish restaurant -- all steps from the Elvis show’s theater.

Near the international gaming area, you’ll find the Strip’s first Thai restaurant Lemongrass and the Blossom Chinese restaurant. Close to the check-in lobby dominated by the sweeping 84-foot Maya Lin sculpture of the Colorado River, you’ll find Sage from Chicago top chef Shawn McClain, Bellagio star chef Julian Serrano has a new huge tapas menu and seafood bar restaurant and the Japanese stunners Bar Masa and Shaboo from world-famous chef Masayoshi Takayama.

Our contributing photographer Tom Donoghue shot all the chefs for a Vegas DeLuxe photo gallery we’ll post later.

Additionally, set dead center in the casino floor is the open-walled Union restaurant and lounge from chef Brian Massie of The Light Group nightclub and restaurant empire. It means casino players can gaze on the diners while they can watch the high-roller table action. The Light Group also operates the very chic and high-limit gaming Deuce Lounge, The Gold Lounge opposite the Cirque du Soleil theater that pays tribute to Elvis and his Graceland home and pet monkeys, and the masterpiece -- the 25,000 square-foot, tri-level Haze nightclub that’s 10,000 feet larger than Jet that The Light Group operates in The Mirage. A fifth venue Light is opening at Aria will be the playground pool Liquid, an outdoor refuge of luxury in early spring. I took a close-up tour of all The Light Group properties yesterday with its president, the beautiful Jodi Myers, and we’ll have that photo report later.

So the hours, minutes and seconds are ticking as we get closer to 11 tonight, and then the public gets to see it and experience for themselves firsthand as the Las Vegas skyline officially changes forever. We’re betting that they will love it. We’re betting that CityCenter will be talked about for weeks and months across the globe. We’re betting that it will attract tourists old and new and that they’ll even stay longer at the shimmering city within a city. It’s an architectural masterpiece that Las Vegas has never seen before and probably will never see again on such a size and scope -- and, as I said recently, it is the newest wonder of the world.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

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