Random local notes

Back to Vegas topics today. The big hotel next door is adding on an additional tower. This one will add over 3,000 rooms to the complex, an additional 50,000 square meters of meeting space and a doubling of the shopping area. Originally scheduled to open in October, the official date is now December 20. This was the scene out on Sands Boulevard recently with a crew working on the side façade:


What is that, twelve levels of planking? Reminds me of the erector set I had as a kid, imagine putting all of those pipes together to make such a monumental structure.

The shopping arcade on the second floor will be an extension of the current one. Several months ago they build a small dam out of sandbags, cutting off the end of the canal. A wall was put up and the shops down at the end were knocked down as the connection is being made. The builders did put in some small windows so that people could look at the progress of the construction. This is the current view:


That’s the canal in the center, with a larger turning area at the end. I think they will move the boarding area down there, as the lines do take up quite a bit of the big palazzo. The fancy street lights are up and working, but with all the plaster dust it looks like a Dickens snow scene.

Downstairs there is another area that few visitors get to see. This is the loading dock downstairs, where all supplies for our convention center and the hotel are unloaded.


It’s empty in the photo, but today there is a long line of trucks waiting to unload food. This area is also used for partial staging of construction stuff for the hotel expansion. You can see some of the workers in white getting off shift. There is a crew of several hundred drywall and plasterers working three shifts on the new tower. With over 3,000 rooms – not standard hotel rooms but suites, on up to several

All of the halls down here are busy with setting up for a big show next week, one of the gift shows. It takes all of the halls and several of the big meeting rooms. Yesterday they started ‘marking the floors’ which entails measuring out for the 4,000 + booths and putting down strips of thin white tape. Today the carpet is being unrolled and the dividers and drapes are going in. Tomorrow will be the supplies and then Friday and Saturday will come the exhibitors, with the show opening on Sunday. So enough food has to come in to feed the show and exhibitor staff along with an expected 45,000 attendees. I imagine that there will be a lot of trucks every day.