Buildings
In Las Vegas, W Project Favors the Little Guy
(archrecord.construction.com - 10/06/2006)
By Tony
Illia
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| Courtesy Edge Resorts
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Lacina Heitler Architects recently won
the competition to design a new $2.5 billion W Hotel, Casino
and Residences in Las Vegas. It is the largest project to
date for the small New York firm, which until now had been
best known for designing boutique stores in Manhattan, such
as Galo, and Searle. It beat out Carlos Ott of Uruguay; Swiss
architects Herzog & de Meuron, and the London office of
HKS Architects to win the job.
The new W will be located on a 24.5-acre
site just east of the Strip. Plans call for two 50-story Modernist
glass towers combining for 4,000 hotel and condo-hotel units,
as well as 20 restaurants, bars, and lounges. There will be
a Bliss spa, fitness center, and 75,000-square-foot casino;
Fred Segal, the Los Angeles retailer, will also open a 100,000-square-foot
store. The complex is being developed by a joint venture between
two-year-old Las Vegas–based investment company The Edge
Group and Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide.
“Lacina Heitler’s design was
elegant and timeless as well as realistic to build from a
construction standpoint," says Adam Frank, a development
team principal. “Also, as a smaller firm, they were hungry.
We would be dealing with the company principals as opposed
to a large design team whose names aren’t on the wall.”
Groundbreaking is set for mid-2007, with completion anticipated
by late 2009.
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