From October 2006 to March 2009, I served as Sales Contract Administrator for CityCenter, the approximately $9.2 billion development by MGM Resorts International and Dubai World on the Las Vegas Strip. It was, and remains, the project I am proudest of in forty years of work.
My role was sales-contract and transaction administration for the development. At that scale, there is no small paper: every contract I administered supported the deals that made the project real. Precision was not a virtue there — it was the job. A missed term, an inconsistent exhibit, an untracked change could ripple across a transaction measured in billions.
What the era gave me was discipline I have carried ever since. Working at the intersection of sales and administration on a project of that magnitude taught me how development, financing, and operations speak different languages — and how the person who keeps the contract record honest makes it possible for all three to move together.
When I later underwrote hotel acquisitions at Innvest Hotel Brokers and founded my own research platform in 2012, the standards came from those CityCenter years: verify everything, write it down exactly, and never let the paperwork fall behind the deal.