Harmon implosion hearing recessed until July

Four days of hearings this week failed to resolve whether CityCenter can demolish its Harmon hotel tower on the Las Vegas Strip prior to a jury trial on defective work there — and a new round of hearings is now set for July.

In the massive Clark County District Court lawsuit over defective work at the Harmon and CityCenter’s refusal to pay contractors it holds responsible, Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez initially hoped to wrap up hearings on CityCenter’s implosion plan Thursday.

When it became obvious this week’s hearings didn't provide enough time for attorneys to question engineers and other witnesses, on Wednesday she initially set another round of hearings for April 18 and 19.

But on Thursday, it became obvious attorneys needed even more time to prepare and they’ll also need more than two days to wrap up the proceedings.

So Gonzalez scrapped the April dates and set aside the week of July 9.

Until then, CityCenter attorneys and lawyers for CityCenter general contractor Perini Building Co. and its subcontractors can take depositions from additional witnesses and research and write briefs on emerging issues in the case that Gonzalez wants to see developed.

At issue in the case is not whether CityCenter can demolish the Harmon. It’s already been ordered by Clark County to abate the hazard of the Harmon collapsing in an earthquake, which could cause catastrophic damage to other elements of CityCenter, the neighboring Cosmopolitan and Las Vegas Boulevard.

With Clark County giving CityCenter the option of repairing or demolishing the Harmon, CityCenter has chosen the demolition option and it wants the $279 million, 26-story building removed sooner rather than later.

So the issue for Gonzalez to decide is whether the Harmon can come down prior to a February 2013 jury trial in which CityCenter will blame Perini and its contractors for defective work at the Harmon and in which Perini will blame errors by CityCenter’s design firm.

One issue Gonzalez wants the attorneys to develop is called ''jury view'' and covers whether it would be beneficial for jurors to be able to tour the Harmon.

This issue also relates to concerns by Perini and the subcontractors that demolition of the building — where work was halted in 2010 — would create bias against the builders by causing jurors to think that the Harmon must have been defective, otherwise it would still be standing.

Local structural engineer Steve Schiller of John A. Martin and Associates, which has been retained by Perini to examine and draw up repairs for the Harmon, testified Thursday it would be useful for the building to be standing should disputes arise over conflicting instructions that contractors might have received during the construction process.

''There are some questions I would not be able to determine the answer to without going down and seeing which of the conflicting instructions were followed,'' Schiller said. ''There is a possibility I would need to verify something in the field if I had two documents that were conflicting and no understanding of which of those were followed.''

He also agreed with Perini that it would be helpful for jurors to see the Harmon.

''I don’t believe you can get an understanding of the scale of the amount of concrete that is in this building, the thickness of the walls, the depth of the (load) transfer elements (such as beams and columns) without going out there,'' he said. ''I was surprised at the scale of some of these structural elements.''

CityCenter, however, says it has identified 1,700 defects at the Harmon, that these have been documented with thousands of photos and engineers’ notes and that contractors have had plenty of opportunity to obtain similar evidence for jurors to see.

Schiller on Thursday described numerous permanent repairs that could be done to the building to correct design and construction defects and bring it to code, but didn’t disclose the cost of the proposed fixes.

On Wednesday, Perini revealed it had a $2 million plan to temporarily shore up the building to deal with the earthquake-collapse risks.

But CityCenter’s engineer has testified that given the extensive defects throughout the building, it would take a year or more of analysis just to determine if it can be repaired.

All of this caused Gordon Absher, vice president of public affairs for MGM Resorts International, to issue a statement Thursday reiterating that the ''fastest, surest and safest way to protect public safety'' is to demolish the Harmon.

''Perini continues to point fingers and blame everyone but itself for the Harmon's construction defects. It keeps floating phantom theories about design flaws and cockamamie fixes that it had ample opportunity to address years ago. None of what we’ve heard is documented or realistic,'' Absher said.

The problems at the Harmon generally involve missing or improperly installed steel reinforcing bars; as well as missing connections between structural elements.

CityCenter is half-owned and managed by MGM Resorts International.