MGM Wants to Blow Up Never-Opened Vegas Hotel

Hotel implosions aren’t exactly unheard of in Las Vegas, but it’s not every day the condemned is a brand-new, never-opened luxury tower. MGM on Monday submitted a request to the county office to implode Harmon Tower, a luxury hotel that was supposed to be the crown jewel in the Strip’s $9 billion CityCenter project, the Wall Street Journal reports. It’s been derailed because of multiple construction problems; engineers say it couldn’t withstand an earthquake.

MGM says blowing the tower up is the quickest, safest way to resolve the issue, even though the contractors building the tower—who are locked in a legal battle with MGM—say they could fix it. “In this economy, MGM resorts clearly has no interest in completing the tower,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal observes in an editorial. “Perhaps the implosion of the Harmon could be promoted as an offering to end the curse of this recession.” (More Las Vegas stories.)