Topping off ceremony for first megaresort of 2000

Robert Macy

Friday, June 18, 1999 | 6:07 a.m.

A steel beam was hoisted 410 feet above the Las Vegas Strip Friday, marking a major step in the evolution of the city's first megaresort of 2000.

"This is another great moment in the making of Las Vegas history," Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt told construction workers gathered in 100-degree heat to watch topping out ceremonies for the new Aladdin Hotel-Casino. "The genie is out of the bottle and the Aladdin is the megaresort of the new millennium."

A steel beam, painted white and bearing the signatures of workers on the project, was hoisted to the top of the 39-story structure, where Jack Sommer, chairman of Aladdin Gaming, LLC, attached a gold bolt as the beam was eased in place.

Four steelworkers guiding the beam into place paused for a moment of silence in honor of Steve Abernathy, a fellow worker who was killed in a fall at the hotel.

The 2,600-room resort is scheduled to open in May, Sommer said as he wound his way through construction equipment on the top floor, the future site of posh suites as large as 7,000 square feet.

He bragged of the project featuring the highest amount of steel - 25,000 tons - of any construction job west of the Mississippi.

He said the new hotel will be, in keeping with its namesake, "a place where hopes and dreams and wishes come true."

Sommer said plans are progessing for a second tower on the site which will contain 1,000 rooms. Aladdin had planned to develop that project with Planet Hollywood, but those plans fell through when the restaurant-entertainment chain experienced financial problems.

Included in the resort will be the Desert Passage, a 500,000 square-foot shopping complex encircling the hotel tower. The project will include 150 shops, restaurants and entertainment venues, according to Paul Beirnes, director of marketing for the shopping complex.

The new resort will replace the old Aladdin hotel-casino, a Las Vegas icon that was imploded in April 1998. Sommer said his new building will feature rounded ends on wings of the structure reminiscent of the architecture of the old building.