Principals James Burnett, FASLA and Jereck Boss, ASLA were on hand to celebrate the star-studded opening of MGM Mirage’s CityCenter project in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 16th, 2009. The CityCenter project is a 16.7M GSF mixed use resort project on a 76-acre urban site along the Las Vegas strip. Organized around the 4,000-room Aria hotel and casino, the project also includes the Residences at the Mandarin Oriental, the Harmon Hotel and Spa, the residential Veer Towers, the Vdara condo-hotel and the Crystals, a 500,000 GSF retail and entertainment center.

Noted as the largest privately funded construction project ever built in the United States, CityCenter includes a variety of green technologies, including the use of reclaimed water and an on-site power plant. Several of the buildings have achieved LEED certification. Developed by MGM Mirage and Dubai World, the project’s award-winning design team includes master planners Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn Architects, Pelli Clark Pelli Architects, Rafael Vinoly Architecture, Helmut Jahn, Foster + Partners, Kohn Pederson Fox Architects, Studio Daniel Liebskind and the Rockwell Group. Architect of Record services were offered by Gensler, HKS and Adamson Associates.

Working closely with CityCenter Horticulture, the Office of James Burnett served as the Executive Landscape Architect for over $260M worth of site improvements. Designers from OJB worked with DIRT Studio, Field Operations, Hargreaves Associates, Martha Schwartz and Partners and Melendrez, providing peer review of construction documents and formulating best practice details to be utilized on the project. The OJB team also provided design and documentation services for a large portion of the project along Las Vegas Boulevard and Casino Avenue.