CMU School of Drama


Friday, February 23, 2018

New details emerge for Sphere Las Vegas project near Strip

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Developers of the planned 18,000-seat MSG Sphere Las Vegas received a development waiver from Clark County Wednesday and plans are in the works to add a Las Vegas Monorail stop near the planned spherical performance venue.

Representatives of the company also said the project would require a review from the Federal Aviation Administration because, at 360 feet tall and just off the McCarran International Airport flight pattern, officials want to affirm that the building won’t disrupt air traffic.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

This looks like a really innovative and dynamic new venue. I’m glad that the officials are taking the necessary precautions to insure that the building does not pose any risks to flight traffic. It is also nice to see that the development of this project will be entirely privately funded and not take in any taxpayer money. Unfortunately all too many projects like this are funded in part by the tax payers, and result in in wealthy real estate developers being subsidized by the tax payers. If this is built though, it will probably be a fantastic place to see concerts, shoes, and other productions. It will certainly add another breathtaking location to the list of many places that Vegas is already known for. I love the concept of a making it look like the earth as a sphere. It is ingenious considering most stadiums already have a semi-spherical shape, so this is merely taking that shape and using a well known spherical object to form the basis of the aesthetic for the stadium.

Kimberly McSweeney said...

Las Vegas has such an interesting ecosystem seeing that everything is surrounded by entertainment and tourism, and very little thought has to go into how things affect the day-to-day residents. I’m sure if anything like this building were proposed for a more metropolitan area like Pittsburgh, New York, or Boston, it would have so much pushback from all the residents that it would take years to get approved and not even make it to its final design phase. The fact that the building can have basic things like parking requirements waived just because of location and proximity to the big resorts in Las Vegas. It’s also pretty crazy that the monorail is working so closely with the project to ensure a smooth integration into the ever-crazier ecosystem of Las Vegas. This building is going to be a huge success if it works out the way the developers want it to.

Shahzad Khan said...

Although the construction of this will probably be bummer on tourists visiting Las Vegas(never stopped the hardcore ones before), I think that once it's constructed it has the potential to be yet another huge success for Las Vegas' incredible night and concert life. In a way, the Las Vegas strip is the perfect place to be placing this dome, it won't be gentrifying any neighborhood or disturbing the peace of any residents because most people that live on the strip, leave or are thrown out after a couple days. Not that it was hard before, but with the construction of this sphere, tourists will have even more to do when they go to Vegas. This project though ambitious, will not be a cost friendly one, with the construction of a monorail stop at the same time of construction should cost these private funds an arm, leg, and soul. Las Vegas is slowly turning into the city of the future with beautiful modern architecture, monorails, lights, and sometimes the scum of humanity, and i for one am glad its happening away from my residence, but I'll gladly fly over to Vegas on any weekend for a night in this sphere.

Sonja Meyers said...

With what major news the Sphere has been over the past year, I thought it was really interesting to dig back into the first mention of the Sphere on this page: all the way back in 2018. I had no idea that construction for this project started all the way back then, basically five years ago. I thought it was really interesting that the original plan was for the venue to open in 2020. In a way, the place seems so futuristic that it almost seems odd that this whole thing was planned and was beginning construction when I was in middle school. The sphere was a thing during the last big eclipse too, which is just kind of a weird thing to think about. Another new fact I learned from this article was that because of its size, the FAA had to approve the building plans to ensure there wouldn’t be an issue with hitting air traffic, which I never knew was a concern for the venue.