Wednesday, September 22, 2010

shadow corridor

breezeway between vdara & bellagio, las vegas

These two Vegas photos are from the short skybridge between the Bellagio & Vdara hotels, beneath the tram station to the Monte Carlo. Shown here are the shadows of said skybridge & tram station on the vast blank back wall of the new (as in, opening mid-December 2010) Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas hotel & casino. Not only is it a blank wall (and undecorated blank walls are awfully rare in Vegas), there's no obvious way to get to the Cosmopolitan from the skybridge, the tram, or either of the adjacent hotels. Unless you walk all the way out to the Strip, which is surprisingly far from here.

breezeway between vdara & bellagio, las vegas

Most of the properties on the west side of the Strip are part of the MGM Mirage empire, and the Cosmopolitan is one of the rare exceptions. Its developers managed to obtain a small wedge of land and built a pair of very tall towers on it -- which were once intended to be condominiums before the condo market imploded. Complicating the matter even further, an existing building on the site (the older Jockey Club timeshare resort) wouldn't or couldn't sell, and they ended up building around it instead. The towers appear to have great views of the Bellagio fountain and the Strip that would've otherwise gone to MGM's Aria & Vdara hotels. That plus the whole blank wall, no walkway thing suggests to me that relations between neighbors here are other than cordial. I don't actually know that for a fact, but it kind of stands to reason.

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