 Las Vegas CityCenter |
Get this: Donald Trump, the king of gold bathtubs, is criticizing a rival project as too expensive and over the top.
The Donald’s target is CityCenter, the massive project on the Las Vegas Strip often referred to as the largest commercial project in the United States. Co-developed by MGM Mirage and Dubai World, the troubled Dubai conglomerate, the 67-acre CityCenter includes five towers designed by star architects Daniel Libeskind, Pelli Clarke, Helmut Jahn, Kohn Pedersen Fox and Rafael Vinoly, with more than 2,000 condo units.
In an interview with Larry King, Trump called the project “an absolute catastrophe." The next day, in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Trump said, “The biggest problem is it costs so much. It cost billions more than anticipated and it's going to be hard to recover from that."
Trump may be a tad peeved that CityCenter is sucking sales and the limelight from his own Vegas project, the Trump International Tower, which is just another gold tower in Sin City’s new spectrum of gaudy. The International Tower “is doing very nicely,” Trump told the Review-Journal. “It was built ahead of schedule and on budget."
The response from MGM Mirage was blunt and succinct: "I can hardly imagine anyone's opinion that matters less than his," a spokesman said.
Trump does have a point. CityCenter has had a troubled history, to put it mildly. At one point, Dubai World, which was spiraling toward financial disaster, accused MGM Mirage of “mismanaging” the project. Another tower was shortened and re-designed after a contractor botched the job.
However, Trump needs to coordinate his story with his son. Eric Trump, executive v.p. of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization, recently praised CityCenter, saying the project will put Vegas back in the spotlight.
"There's no question that opening a new project, and the marketing dollars spent, gets people excited," the younger Trump told the Review-Journal.
Before the downtown, condo sales in the towers were brisk, fueled, in part, by international buyers, particualrly from Asia. But in October the developers dropped prices by 30 percent to help boost sales.
Aria, the first CityCenter tower, is opening tonight.
UPDATE: Trump e-mailed the Review-Journal to respond to the MGM spokesperson's comment. He wrote: "The CityCenter is architecturally unappealing--It will be the biggest bust in the history of real estate--good concept but badly designed and really badly executed. Too bad."
