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LAS VEGAS--While slot machines, silver palm trees and celebrity-safety announcements provide the glitz and glitter at McCarran International Airport, its real distinction is the farsightedness that has enabled it to stay ahead of astounding traffic growth through the years.
Right now, for example, it is building some $190 million worth of tunnels, bridges and highways to prepare for the traffic congestion that will clog its primary access road upon the opening of three huge resort complexes next year. The MGM Grand Hotel and Theme Park, Luxor and Treasure Island will boost the Las Vegas hotel-room count by 15% to 87,000 and could hike McCarran's passenger count by the same percentage. "Our challenge is to be ready when it hits," says Aviation Director Robert Broadbent, a man whom staff members describe as "a visionary with! an uncanny ability to see the future."
In 1948, when Nevada's Sen. Pat McCarran, author of the Civil Aeronautics Act, persuaded George Crockett to sell his 640-acre Alamo Airport to Clark County, the famed Las Vegas Strip consisted of two dude-ranch resorts, the city's population was 12,000 and the airport served 35,000 passengers. Today, "the entertainment capital of the world" is this nations fastest-growing city with a population nearing 1 million and in 1992, McCarran's namesake airport sprawled over 2,800-plus acres and handled a record 20.9 million passengers. More than 40% of all Las Vegas visitors pass through McCarran's portals and its passenger count is forecast to double by 2025.
Construction has been a constant since the 1963 dedication of a new terminal that was denounced as "an overbuilt white elephant basking in the desert sun." Just three years later, a $30 million expansion doubled the airport's size. In 1970, another $30 million terminal expansion was launched that included installation of some of the first moving sidewalks at a U.S. airport. In 1973, a revised master plan kicked off yet another building spurt.
But the real growth surge began in 1979, with the unveiling of McCarran 2000, a 20-year master plan calling for more than $1 billion in improvements.
Phase I, completed in 1987 at a cost of $315 million, saw construction of a 1.3 million-sq.-ft., 8-level steel-and-concrete central terminal and parking structure designed, said architect TRA Consultants, to mirror the...