Las Vegas New Year’s fireworks back to rooftops

Las Vegas New Year’s fireworks back to rooftops

LAS VEGAS — New Year’s Eve fireworks will return to the rooftops of Las Vegas Strip hotels to ring in 2010 after ground-level displays disappointed revelers last year, event and county officials said.

“We’re moving the fireworks show back to where it should be,” said Pat Christenson, president of the event promoter, Las Vegas Events.

Christenson said the $550,000 fireworks show will be fired from atop seven tall hotels lining Las Vegas Boulevard. The street will again be closed to form a pedestrian mall for the event that tourism officials have dubbed “America’s Party.”

Plans call for fireworks to be shot from the Stratosphere tower, the MGM Grand, Planet Hollywood, Caesars Palace, Treasure Island and Venetian hotels, and the Aria Resort & Casino at MGM Mirage’s CityCenter complex. Aria is set to open in December.

Christenson conceded that last year’s low-trajectory pyrotechnics disappointed some of the estimated 250,000 people attending what became an annual aerial fireworks event in 2001.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the producer of the show, Fireworks by Grucci, began working last January to meet fire and building regulations.

The fireworks were not held this past New Year’s Eve because of concerns that followed a spectacular three-alarm blaze ignited by welders’ sparks at the Monte Carlo hotel-casino in January 2008. No one was seriously hurt, although 6,000 guests and employees had to evacuate the hotel.