Great Strides for Las Vegas! CityCenter hotels achieve LEED Gold Certification for Green Design!

CITYCENTER’S ARIA AND VDARA FIRST LAS VEGAS HOTELS TO ACHIEVE LEED^® GOLD CERTIFICATION

ARIA Resort Now World’s Largest LEED^® Gold Certified Building

City Center announced today that it has received three Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED^®) Gold Certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council for: 1) ARIA Resort’s hotel tower; 2) ARIA Resort’s convention center and theater; 3) Vdara Hotel ARIA and Vdara will open in December on the Las Vegas Strip and are the first of CityCenter’s developments to be LEED certified. CityCenter anticipates Gold or Silver LEED certification for its remaining developments which include Las Vegas’ first Mandarin Oriental; Crystals, a 500,000-square-foot retail and entertainment district; Veer Towers, the community’s only strictly residential buildings; and The Harmon (opening late 2010), a 400-room luxury boutique hotel.

CityCenter will serve as a remarkable demonstration that a community can be both beautiful and sustainable while providing exceptional entertainment, hospitality, and meeting and convention experiences. This blend of nature and luxury will be evident in the design and construction solutions employed to achieve dramatic improvements in energy efficiency, water conservation, and occupant health and comfort. Particular highlights of CityCenter’s LEED efforts include:

• First energy-generation on The Strip through its 8.5 megawatt natural-gas co-generation plant, providing efficient electricity on site, reducing emissions and using “waste heat” to provide domestic hot water

· Water conservation technology and programs that will save between 30% and 43% of water within the buildings and 60% in outdoor landscaping

• World’s first fleet of stretch limos powered by clean-burning compressed natural gas (CNG)
• Nation’s most technologically advanced hotel rooms with exclusive features allowing guests to “green their stay”
• Development of slot machine bases that serve as floor air-conditioning distribution units, efficiently cooling public spaces from the ground up in the occupied zones, rather than wasting energy cooling the empty space below the ceiling
• Energy-efficiency initiatives providing a savings equivalent to powering 8,800 households annually
• Creation of a large-scale recycling operation that enabled the recycling or reuse of more than 260,000 tons of construction waste, including 97% of the imploded Boardwalk Hotel
• More information on CityCenter’s Green initiatives can be found at: http://www.prnewswire.com/mnr/mgm/39529/

“From the beginning we believed that intelligent design and sustainable practices would reinforce a sense of permanence for CityCenter and create a healthier, more appealing environment for guests, residents and our workforce,” said Bobby Baldwin, CityCenter’s president and CEO. “The LEED Gold certification for ARIA and Vdara is a great leap forward in our effort to redefine the destination resort experience and provide a true cultural center to the Las Vegas Strip.”

It is refreshing and very nice to see that some big corporations take the preservation of our natural resources important! This achievement represents great strides for Las Vegas!