Thursday, December 24, 2009

The Las Vegas - Dubai Express

David Littlejohn in the Wall Street Journal on CityCenter Las Vegas:

"The second highly-touted good work of CityCenter is its achievement of "LEED Gold" status for six of its buildings, a high mark of distinction for environmental responsibility never before achieved in a project of this scale. ... The center has its own power regeneration plant, energy-saving glass walls, and automatic means of limiting the use of electricity and water. Smoke is pulled upward from the casino floor (all hotels except the Aria are nonsmoking), and slot machine bases house air conditioners. The Aria's fleet of stretch limos to ferry high rollers runs on compressed natural gas."

I'd like to think Littlejohn is choking up on the irony here, but I rather suspect he is simply clueless.

Also clueless: I didn't know that Dubai World is the major outside investor. If you're ever looking for a big-time sucker, go East, man, go Middle East.

Sorry, no pictures -- can't find any that look real.