On a quarter-mile long, slightly-icy, largely-muddy,
oblong tract in Oxon Hill, a $1.2 billion resort is emerging.
It's hard to spot the progress on MGM National Harbor from the adjacent Capital
Beltway, but after more than seventh months of work, the sloping site is nearly
ready for vertical construction. In a matter of weeks, the ground will be
covered by concrete. Within two months, the first level of the garage will be
up. By summer, some workers will be inside.
I toured the site on Wednesday with Gordon Absher, MGM's vice president of public
affairs, and Eric Coates, environmental health and safety
manager with MGM contractor McKissack & McKissack. It is an active,
1,550-foot-long construction zone, though the activity is quiet compared to
what's coming.
"We're moving along," Coates said.
"Everything is very staged right now."
To this point, work has largely been focused on or under
the ground. Employees with dozens of contractors, many local, have removed
545,000 cubic yards of earth, driven 4,644 piles (out of a total of 6,411) deep
into the ground (the soil is too soft to support the resort without them),
installed 400 pile caps with 7,000 cubic yards of concrete, buried utilities
and built the foundation for the first of 10 tower cranes soon to be on site.
They are making their own concrete in one of, eventually,
three concrete batch plants, providing on-site medical care and drug testing,
and staging out of roughly 10,000 square feet of double-wide trailers.
This is a massive operation, maybe the largest economic
development project in the region, and time is tight. MGM Resorts International
(NYSE: MGM) plans to open the 1 million-square-foot resort in the second half
of 2016 (they've stopped saying July 2016). The 160 workers currently tackling
the lot overlooking National Harbor will balloon to more than 1,000 before the
end of 2015.
The end result will be a single structure featuring a
23-story, 308-room hotel tower (including 74 luxury suites), a 4,646-space,
six-story parking garage, a 26,582-square-foot spa and salon, 12 food and
beverage outlets, 18,259 square feet of retail shops, 27,431 square feet of
conference space, a 3,000-seat theater and a casino with 3,303 video lottery
terminals and 160 table games.
It will be, by far, the largest of Maryland's gaming
facilities, although Maryland Live! features roughly 1,000 more lottery
terminals than MGM National Harbor plans to have.
The resort's design has evolved, but the structure
retains largely the same look as it has for more than a year. Interior
renderings have not been released, and likely will not be for some time.
McKissack & McKissack is the project manager, and Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. is the general
contractor. Absher said MGM had engaged, as of November, 53 certified minority
business enterprises, which have been paid a total of $18.8 million.
Source: Washington
Business Journal
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