Report and Pictures Detail Construction Defects at Harmon Tower

The fight over CityCenter's Harmon Tower is heating up with new evidence. Thousands of pictures showing alleged construction defects are now being used by MGM Resorts International to fight the $300 million lawsuit brought by Perini Building Company.

The 277 page report is merely the...

tip of the iceberg. There are several thousand pictures, diagrams, and engineering schematics on a hard drive. For the first time, it gives a clearer look inside the abandoned tower.

Slideshow: Pictures from Inside the Harmon Tower

Pictures taken in October of last year show engineers with Raths, Raths & Johnson inside the tower. With measuring tapes and hard hats, they tore holes in the walls to get to the rebar. Much like a doctor performing a bone test, the team of engineers claim they found major problems with the skeleton of Harmon Tower. They claim a strong shake could bring it down. If MGM's engineer's are correct, there is also now a clear definition of how strong an earthquake would need to be to collapse the tower.

"We were told it was 6.5. Whether 6.5 would truly take the building down, I really don't have that expertise," said Clark County Commissioner Susan Brager.

That's partly why Clark County commissioners demanded even more information from MGM. The gaming and resort company says it has responded to every county request, but adds it's too early to provide detailed implosion plans.

"I feel somewhat comfortable that they would do all that's necessary, with the glass being removed, and then getting us a plan. I had heard something about four months, which seemed like an extraordinary amount of time. I'd like to know if that could be shortened. That's a long time to have debris, or whatever it might be, left," said Brager.

Perini construction places full blame on the architects MGM hired, but deny any defects exist that cannot be fixed. Harmon's lead architect was Norman Foster of London. UNLV Architecture Department Chair David Baird explains the complex relationship.

"Other architects, the architect of record, perhaps, often will take responsibility for coordinating those with a team of people," he said.

And as the documents show, the "architect of record" for MGM is Halcrow Yolles Group. That means several companies are now in the middle of a court trial with no chosen start date expected to last six months.

Source: Nathan Baca & Tim Zietlow, 8NewsNow