Hard hat firmly in place, Steve Pelletier guided me through the back-of-house maze toward the floor of the Park Theater. With studs installed but walls not yet in place, finding our way through the forest of beams and frames was a challenge, but after a few wrong turns we made it out of the building's bowels and into the hall itself.
The Park Theater, which will debut Dec. 17 with a concert from Stevie Nicks, is the first piece of a massive $450 million collaboration between MGM Resorts and New York-based Sydell Group. When completed in 2018, the project will remake the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino into two hotels: the Park MGM, a new brand that MGM may export to other markets, and the NoMad Hotel, which already has a New York location and one in development in Los Angeles. The Park Theater is a cornerstone of those renovations, a first glimpse at the upcoming changes and the connective tissue that ties the rebranding to another ambitious MGM undertaking: the Park, an outdoor dining and entertainment corridor that opened earlier this year and leads to the new T-Mobile Arena.
When the whole project is finished more than a year from now, MGM Resorts will effectively have dragged the energetic heart of the Strip further north.
For now, however, the Park Theater is a worthy destination in its own right and an indicator of Las Vegas' changing entertainment landscape. Pelletier, MGM Resorts' director of event production, actually worked on the same space 20 years ago, installing the Lance Burton theater, an ornate Vegas showroom that housed the magician for years.
The Park Theater transformed that venue into a totally new space, a 5,200-seat concert hall with telescopic seating that retracts to open up more floor space, an ultrawide stage that stretches 135 feet and top-of-the-line technology like 30K HD projectors and an 80-foot LED wall along the back of the stage.
The venue is designed not for production shows but touring concerts and artist residencies, the new bread-and-butter of Strip entertainment.
"It's really more like a small luxury arena," said Pelletier, adding that Park Theater is expected to host 120 events in 2017 including residencies from Bruno Mars, Cher and Ricky Martin and potentially smaller boxing matches and UFC's smaller fights.
The decor is contemporary and tasteful: undulating metallic walls, sleek teal wallpaper, large banks of windows and a grand staircase topped with custom chandeliers that leads to upper level seating and outdoor terraces. Guests can sip a cocktail before a show while overlooking the Park from any of seven bars, and the high orchestra includes 68 VIP seats with table and bottle service available.
Perhaps most notably, the distance from the front of the stage to the farthest seat in the house is only 150 feet. Even at the top of the balcony, you feel like you can reach out and touch the artist onstage.
"It doesn't give you a sense of being in the nosebleeds," Pelletier said.
For his money, he's pegged the center of the balcony as a great place to see a show, high enough to take in the full spectacle but without the vertigo-inducing rake that makes some theaters' upper levels a discomforting experience.
"This is going to be a real special place," Pelletier said with obvious pride as he scans the venue he's helped create.
Even without the walls fully installed, it's easy to understand why he thinks so.