Thursday, Aug. 17, 2000 | 12:20 p.m.
Aladdin officials and construction workers raced the clock this afternoon, trying to get the $1.4 billion hotel-casino ready for the public by its scheduled 7 p.m. grand opening.
The hotel-casino, themed after 1,001 Arabian Nights, was still scheduled to open its doors to the public at 7 p.m. tonight. Opening simultaneously will be Desert Passage, a 500,000-square-foot themed shopping complex designed to invoke images of street scenes from cities and towns along the North African coast. Metro police expect a crowd of 20,000 to be on hand when the resort opens its doors.
But final tests of the Aladdin's fire and life safety systems were delayed this morning at the property's request. Initially scheduled to begin at 5 a.m., the tests have now been rescheduled twice today. The Aladdin must pass these tests before it will be permitted to open to the public.
In the latest postponement, Aladdin officials requested a delay in the testing until after 4 p.m. today. That would leave just three hours for the property to pass its tests and open on time.
"It's their schedule," said Ron Lynn, assistant director of the Clark County Building Department. "We're prepared to work through midnight."
Updates on the progress of these tests and changes to the opening time of the Aladdin will be reported this afternoon and evening on the Las Vegas Sun website vegas.com and television station Las Vegas ONE.
Under a best-case scenario the tests would take two to three hours, allowing the property to open at 7 p.m. as scheduled.
"If we're in there to test and have a couple of hours and everything goes perfectly, then yes (it could open at 7 p.m.)," said Rita Mincavage, spokeswoman for the building department.
Lynn Holt, spokesman for the Aladdin, said this morning that the Aladdin was optimistic it will still make its self-imposed 7 p.m. deadline.
Holt could not be reached immediately for comment on the second postponement.
Construction on the property was essentially complete this morning. The two major jobs yet to be complete were construction on the high-end London Club at Aladdin gaming parlor and the Theater for Performing Arts. Holt said he expects the London Club to be ready by tonight, while the theater doesn't need to be complete until its first concert Saturday.
"The rest of the place is essentially ... cleaning up for the guests," Holt said.
While the Aladdin's opening could be delayed, the same will probably not be true for the attached Desert Passage mall. Lynn said the mall has received its main safety approvals, and testing is now proceeding on individual shops and external systems, such as drainage and landscaping.
Lynn said no problems are anticipated for the mall's final tests. If that holds true, the Desert Passage will be allowed to open at 7 p.m. as scheduled, even if the Aladdin's final approvals hadn't been received. Desert Passage officials said this morning they will open at 7 p.m., regardless of whether the Aladdin receives final approvals.
The Aladdin is the final grand opening in a frenzied building blitz on the Strip that began with the October 1998 opening of the Bellagio. Since that opening, four additional hotels -- Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, Paris Las Vegas and the Aladdin -- opened their doors, adding more than 15,000 new hotel rooms to the Strip market.
Unlike the black-tie event that christened the original Aladdin in April 1966, there are no plans for a invitation-only pre-grand opening party. Instead, Aladdin officials hope to simply open their doors at 7 p.m. and let the public walk in.
"Those huge blow-outs are for a tiny number of people, and we wanted to gear this to our customers and fellow citizens who might want to come down and see the proceedings," Holt said.
Preliminary plans call for the opening to be proceeded by a parade of camels down Las Vegas Boulevard toward the Aladdin about 15 minutes before opening. The opening ceremony itself "involves a highly appropriate celebrity in a highly appropriate setting," Holt said, though the Aladdin is remaining mum on the celebrity's identity.
Both events are still preliminary, and may be called off if crowds at the grand opening become too large, Holt said.
Only about 700 of the 2,567 rooms are scheduled to be available on opening night, and those rooms will be available only to invited guests. The Aladdin said the limited opening of the hotel is designed to minimize stress for its staff, and say the rest of the rooms will be brought on-line over the next week.
Opening night plans at Desert Passage call for a wide variety of entertainment in the mall after its 7 p.m. opening, including performances by Moroccan acrobats and musicians, dancers from Morocco, Arabia and East India, yoga contortionists, costumed story tellers and 15-foot-high animal characters.
One of the mall's most unique features, a 155-foot freighter complete with fog machines, will be christened at 8 p.m. Starting at 8 p.m. and throughout the night, artificial thunderstorms will peal every 20 minutes through Merchants Harbor, home of the freighter. The thunderstorms will come complete with fog, thunder, artificial lightning, wind machines and rain spilling over the ship's bow into a wave-swept harbor.
"It is a phenomenal experience," said Paul Beirnes, director of marketing for Desert Passage.
About 100 stores and six restaurants will be open until midnight tonight, Beirnes said. Ultimately, the mall will feature 130 stores and 14 restaurants.
In keeping with Las Vegas tradition, a 10-minute fireworks show is scheduled to begin at 10:25 p.m. at the Aladdin "as a gift of gratitude to the city of Las Vegas."
The Aladdin parking garage was scheduled to open to the public at 6:30 p.m., and can be accessed only from Audrie Street, located off Harmon Road just east of the Strip. Valet parking will also be available on Harmon.
At least two lanes of northbound traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard, from Harmon to Bellagio Drive, are expected to close by 3 p.m. to handle pedestrian traffic. Additional lanes could be closed depending on crowd size.
One group of attendees plans a show that the Aladdin would probably rather not see -- a contingent of Culinary Union members protesting the Aladdin's decision to open as a nonunion property. Culinary director of organizing Kevin Kline said at least 1,000 Culinary members will picket on the sidewalks in front of the Aladdin, starting at 5 p.m.
Shortly after the property opens, Kline said a group of about 100 Culinary members and officials plan to enter the hotel-casino to talk with employees about organization, with or without the consent of the Aladdin.
"If the security guards try to stop them, (the members) are prepared to take the arrest in a manner of non-violent civil disobedience," said Kevin Kline, director of organizing for the Culinary. "We expect the company to charge us with trespassing and have us arrested."
Challenges have been nothing new for the Aladdin, which has had a tough two-year road to tonight. It's been a road marked by cost overruns, infighting between investment partners, and some skeptics in the gaming community that sometimes questioned whether the property would ever open its doors.
If all goes well today, Aladdin officials will finally have the opportunity they've been itching for for quite some time -- the opportunity to prove that the new Aladdin can rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the old and become a success.
"It's been an extraordinary journey we've been on; the opportunity to create what we've done in an independent way, and a company consisting of 4,000 souls," said Aladdin Chief Executive Richard Goeglein. "To see it come to fruition will bring a sense of exhilaration and excitement.
"It will be absolutely one of the most exciting, wonderful experiences in my business career."
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