Greening Las Vegas

Las Vegas is the last place you’d ever expect to go green. A dizzying buffet of high-rise hotels, boisterous tourists, casinos, clubs, and lights flashing all around, the city of sin is hardly a picture of eco-friendliness.

The CityCenter—the newest addition to the Strip—promises to change this, however. A 76-acre city-within-a-city, the CityCenter will house hotels and residences, restaurants, and a $40 million public fine art program. Currently under construction and scheduled to open its centerpiece building, Aria, by the end of 2009, the CityCenter is destined to be one of the world’s largest environmentally sustainable urban communities. Inhabitat reports that the CityCenter is the largest privately financed development in the history of North America vying for U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED certification. Indeed, the Center is slated to span 18 million square feet, which Inhabitat says is more square footage than all of the existing LEED-certified buildings combined.

The Center is the product of an $8-billion venture between MGM Mirage and Dubai World, and the goal is to make the process as green as possible. The project's developers have enlisted hundreds of consultants to ensure a sustainable approach to the project, and the MGM Mirage has educated over 10,000 construction workers and craftsmen on green building techniques. Other green bullet points include recycling construction waste, employing eco-sustainable materials, emphasizing natural lighting throughout, and incorporating materials from the imploded Boardwalk Hotel, which once stood where the CityCenter soon will. Also noteworthy is the MGM Mirage’s implementation of custom designed low-flow water fixtures, which will help save some 76 millions gallons of water per day.

Having recently returned from a long weekend in Vegas, which I enjoyed (I’ll even go so far as to say a bit too much) but nonetheless came out of feeling overwhelmed by the overbuilt indulgence of it all, part of me cringes at the thought of seeing yet another set of oversized buildings pierce the skyline. But then I'm reminded that if the CityCenter weren’t being built, chances are that some other building would be going up in its place, and that building wouldn’t necessarily have green in mind. So I look forward to seeing what this venture brings to Vegas and can only hope that all future projects will follow its, um, LEED.

Read More: Explore one of Vegas's hidden eco-hotspots.

Photo: CityCenter

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Comments

[JadedTraveler]

As green as Las Vegas might like to think of itself, the reality is that it lies in the middle of a water-scarce desert. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, responsible for making sure those fountains are filled and golf courses watered, are reaching farther and farther into outlying regions as water tables drop: Cave, Dry Lake, and Delamar Valleys. The big water fight this year is over the Snake Valley water, much of which actually comes from Utah. Las Vegas thrives at the cost of environmental damage -- think dust bowl -- in rural areas that have little political pull.

[Joel P.]

It's true that water use is a huge concern for the area, which is what makes things like the low-flow water fixtures particularly encouraging. Not the greates impact in terms of the big picture, maybe, but it's a step, (and an improvement over the the Belaggio's fountain, no matter how much you love the pink panther). I'd think that the area must be a particularly strong place for potential solar power sites, which could be a help, as my understanding is that much of the surrounding area works off hydro power.

Quite a change from when I saw Vegas six years ago. I remember walking through the Mirage lobby and seeing somebody watering a palm tree with a squirt bottle. I looked closer and realized that the staffer wasn't watering it-- he was spraying it with cleanser and wiping it down. One heck of a city...

[Joe from TerraCurve.com]

Vegas is a strange, surreal place. While I admit that there probably isn't a more "hypocritically-green" travel destination in the entire U.S., I do think it is a POSITIVE gesture to bring such eco-friendly travel ideas to the forefront of travel destinations.

http://www.terracurve.com/2008/06/10/las-vegas-moving-towards-green-with-new-citycenter/

[Mesquite Nevada Hotel]

Well that's good news. Hopefully every major entertainment center starts going green. It would help people realize and maybe even notice a difference.

[Old Man River]

I wonder if there's a green report available for all major cities. It'd be interesting to see which cities are the greenest.