Las Vegas’ Machinery Addiction Rises To Heavy Metal Fever
Las Vegas is hearing heavy metal, not from the usual clink and clatter of slot machines, but from the heavy iron flexing its muscles on some of the country’s largest, most ambitious projects. The city’s famed Strip, a four-mile-long swath of Las Vegas Boulevard, is lined with hulking mega-resort casinos that are constantly being renovated, expanded, imploded and built anew to turn concrete and steel into cash.
The Strip has a dizzying amount of work under way, with $41.4-billion of hotel, casino and convention construction through 2012, reports the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Yet those numbers could grow even greater as another $25.97 billion of tentative projects are now planned for development.