Tourism & Gaming:

One look at MGM Mirage's CityCenter construction site is bound to take your breath away.

You just can't believe that there is so much interesting architecture that is being jammed into a small slice of Las Vegas Boulevard, an area that could become the new signature piece of real estate representing our city, our state, maybe even the entire Southwest when it opens in 2009.

But meanwhile, there's another organization whose members are saying CityCenter literally takes their breath away.

It's Denver -based Smoke-Free Gaming and the message its members delivered to last week's Hotel Developers Conference sponsored by UNLV and Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro LLP is that MGM Mirage's bid for millions of dollars in tax breaks as a LEED-certified "green" construction project is a sham.

LEED is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and builders, designers and architects take their projects to the U.S. Green Building Council for varying levels of environmental certification. The higher the certification, the greater the tax break a company would get for its attention to environmental details.

Representatives of MGM Mirage and two of its CityCenter developers participated in a panel at the two-day conference at Green Valley Ranch, presenting stunning computer-generated videos showing what the development will look like when the doors open.

There will be luxury condo units at the Vdara Condo Hotel and the Harmon Hotel, Spa & Residences. There's a Mandarin Oriental Hotel, a brand known worldwide for its luxurious accommodations and stunning architecture. There's a retail component with an oddly angled roof line and, my personal favorite, the Veer Towers, twin leaning skyscrapers that I anticipate will be a marvel to behold.

At the core of it all is a 4,000-room hotel-casino that already has begun to take shape with an ocean of glass features.

It's that hotel-casino that rankles Stephanie Steinberg, chairwoman of Smoke-Free Gaming, an organization with enough political savvy to convince Colorado voters to approve an initiative requiring the state's low-stakes casinos in Central City, Black Hawk and Cripple Creek to ban smoking.

"It's hypocrisy," Steinberg said of the prospect of CityCenter becoming the largest LEED-registered project in the world. How, she asks, can a building that is supposed to be a model of "green" facilities management and environmental achievement be allowed to have smoking inside?

The short answer from MGM Mirage is, it won't — that is, it won't be a "green" building. The hotel-casino is getting an exemption from the certification. Panelists Cindy Ortega of MGM Mirage and Nellie Reid of Gensler, one of the company's LEED consultants, never tried to hide that the hotel-casino won't qualify. But Steinberg believes it isn't right for MGM Mirage and CityCenter to be held up as an environmental champion if one of its buildings doesn't qualify because smoking is allowed.

She believes the U.S. Green Building Council is giving MGM Mirage a pass because CityCenter will bring considerable notoriety to the organization and its goals of encouraging builders to design structures with environmental sustainability in mind.

To be sure, MGM Mirage is putting a ton of money into the environmental features of City-Center, conducting global searches for materials that don't pollute, that encourage water and energy conservation or preserve air quality.

Although the casino won't qualify for LEED certification, MGM Mirage says it's going the extra mile to provide the best environment possible for the casino. The building has been designed so that pedestrians can navigate it without ever going through an area where smoking is allowed. It also will have a state-of-the-art air filtration and venting system.

But that isn't good enough, Steinberg says, because hotel and casino employees and the visiting public will still be subjected to secondhand smoke that can make them sick or eventually kill them.

Reid said there was concern that if smoking were allowed in the casino that it could be a LEED show-stopper. But because CityCenter is so massive, the casino area is only a small percentage of the whole development. Reid said she wasn't surprised that the U.S. Green Building Council embraced the project.

Steinberg said she'll keep up her efforts to educate the public about what her organization believes and will try to make companies that build smoke-free projects aware that smoking will be allowed in this "green" project. When she went on a 60-second rant during a Q&A session for the panel, the moderator sternly asked her, "Is there a question in this somewhere?"

And sure enough, there was: How is it possible that smoking could be allowed in a "green" building?

In Other Tourism News:

Las Vegas -based Allegiant Air will move into a new corporate headquarters in southwest Las Vegas sometime in May. Allegiant's new HQ:

The new 60,000-square-foot facility being built at the Southern Beltway at Durango Drive will put it right under the flight pattern of its fleet of MD-80 jets when they take off to the west from McCarran International Airport.

Tyri Squyres, spokeswoman for Allegiant, said the move would centralize the company's operations, which currently are scattered in three different locations in the Las Vegas Valley.

Most of the corporate offices are at the Cheyenne Corporate Center — formerly the Flynn-Gallagher Center until Allegiant chief executive Maurice Gallagher sold it. The airline's in-flight operations are at a building near Pecos Road and Patrick Lane and other offices, including those for maintenance executives, are housed at a couple of locations at McCarran.

Squyres said the two-story building, developed by Breslin Builders, will have "several neat elements that will be very Allegiant," including some fuselage and wing mock-ups. The company won't abandon its open-cubicle environment, which Squyres says fosters creativity and communication. Even Gallagher has his own cubicle among the employees at Allegiant.

Allegiant is the seventh-busiest carrier at McCarran by number of passengers served and its planes, as of last week, took on some new artwork with the company's recently signed partnership with Blue Man Group.

Tempe, Ariz. -based US Airways has one less labor hassle to worry about following the announcement last week that the company has a tentative agreement with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents 3,300 of the airline's mechanics. US Airways, mechanics have deal:

It's the first of four union deals McCarran's second-busiest air carrier is trying to complete that would cement the nearly 2-year-old merger deal between US Airways and America West Airlines.

Under terms of the deal, mechanics would get a 10 percent pay raise with three annual pay increases of 3 percent through Dec. 31, 2011. A ratification vote schedule is expected to be set soon.

Former America West employees — most based in Phoenix and Las Vegas — are getting the better end of the deal, since their pay increases would be greater than their East Coast counterparts.

Next on tap: work on agreements with unions representing US Airways pilots, flight attendants and baggage handlers.

Southwest Airlines grounded 38 of its older model Boeing 737 jets last week and reinspected them for fuselage skin cracks. Southwest's groundings: Figuring it was easier to take heat from some 17,000 customers for having their flights canceled than leaving lingering doubt among millions in the public,

The problem actually affected 44 of the airline's jets, but five of them already were having maintenance done and one was retired from the airline's fleet.

It's hard to say how many Las Vegas passengers were affected when the airline canceled 126 flights since the company hasn't disclosed which flights were scratched, but it's safe to say there were quite a few since Las Vegas is Southwest's biggest station with 233 flights a day (Southwest says it's 241 because they count daily flights differently than McCarran).

On March 12, the day most of the inspections occurred, the airline still ran 90 percent on time and by the next day, operations were back to normal.

It takes about an hour and a half to conduct the inspection required by the Federal Aviation Administration. The reason Southwest agreed to ground the planes and do the inspections a second time was because the first inspections were done visually, while the FAA requires an inspection with an imaging system that can detect cracks that couldn't be seen by the naked eye.

As a result of the inspection issues, Southwest has hired outside consultants to assist and placed three of its employees on administrative leave.

Still unresolved as of press time was Southwest's appeal of the record FAA against the airline. Southwest says it's unfair based on the FAA signing off on the airline's remedies when the problems were discovered a year ago and on Southwest's 37-year safety record.$10.2 million fine proposed by the

Las Vegas taxi driver has filed a lawsuit in Clark County District Court against Harrah's Entertainment for ignoring state laws that prohibit limousine operators from soliciting passengers from taxi lines at resorts.Taxi suit: A

Randell Hynes , who drives for the Nellis Taxicab Co., says Harrah's employees routinely take kickbacks to divert to limousines customers waiting for rides in marked taxi lines.

Hynes , who is representing himself in the court action, said Harrah's has arrangements with the owners of limousine companies to divert customers away from taxis at Caesars Palace and five other properties.

Hynes operates a popular Web site, TaxiBuzz.com, which discusses issues and concerns of cab drivers.

The lawsuit is likely to be the first volley in a series of actions as tensions grow in the taxi industry.

Several cab drivers are considering demonstrations at the end of the month in response to steadily declining pay, which they contend is a result of the larger number of cabs on the road. Industry representatives say in the first three months of 2008, most cabdrivers book two rides an hour, on average, in a time of year that is supposed to be the busiest.

"The reason Southwest agreed to ground the planes and do the inspections a second time was because the first inspections were done visually, while the FAA requires an inspection with an imaging system that can detect cracks that couldn't be seen by the naked eye."