Recreating Italy's Lake Como - Las Vegas Landscaper Turns Bellagio Hotel into a Botanical Paradise April 1999

Contractor relies on Telebelt TB 105 to place 70,000 tons of material

When your construction project is billed as the most elegant hotel in Las Vegas, you work with the best contractors in the world. Such was the case with the construction of the $1.6 billion Bellagio Hotel that opened that opened in late 1998.

To get the job done right, Valley Crest, one of the largest landscaping contractors in the country, was chosen for the job. When it was time for them to begin landscaping the hotel with $14 million worth of Cypress and pine trees, exotic plants and flowers, they turned to equipment they knew would perform – including a Putzmeister Telebelt TB 105.

Landscaping the Bellagio Hotel grounds was a huge undertaking. Valley Crest worked on the project for a year with 75 full-time landscapers and irrigation system installers. The centerpiece of the hotel grounds is a beautifully landscaped 12-acre lake at its entrance. The hotel describes it as "a magnificent lake filled with thousands of fountains running the length of Bellagio's grounds. Fragrant gardens and the red tile roofs of Tuscan villas line the water's edge." The lake is also surrounded with elaborate planting areas.

Typically, filling these landscaping boxes with a lightweight planter mix isn't much of a challenge. But when a dozen boxes are up to 30 feet deep by 60 feet wide by 60 feet long and hold as much as 4,000 cubic yards of material, you need high-production equipment.

Having experience with a Telebelt conveyor before, Valley Crest called on the TB 105 again. "The belt conveyor was the obvious choice," said Tim Carpenter, operations manager of Valley Crest's Las Vegas office. "We couldn't find another unit to accomplish the job as fast or as effectively."

The material was brought in by the truckload. The Telebelt first placed 3/4-inch rock on the bottom of the planters then added the lightweight planter mixture – half native soil and half-washed concrete sand, shavings and fertilizer. "In a month, the Telebelt probably moved over 20,000 cubic yards of material," said Carpenter. This also didn't account for more than 100 additional planting areas to fill.

He added that the biggest advantage of using a Telebelt is they only had to touch the material once. "And when you're moving 6,000 tons of material at a time, efficiency counts," he said.

When the Bellagio Hotel opened in late 1998, the lake and surrounding grounds were transformed into a tree-lined replica of Lake Como in Italy.