Las Vegas, Nev.

Symphony Park, in downtown Las Vegas, is home to the Smith Center, providing the city with performance spaces and an outdoor concert arena, plus ballet and philharmonic educational opportunities. Reynolds Hall serves as the Center’s main venue with 2,050 seats, and two smaller theaters offer more intimate performance spaces: the Boman Pavilion, providing cabaret space, and a studio theater for rehearsals and community events.

In 2010, the Smith Center partnered with the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, which originally opened in Las Vegas in 1990, resulting in the Donald W. Reynolds Discovery Center, the museum’s new 58,000-square-foot home on the Smith Center grounds, in Symphony Park.

Designed to be a cultural complex with a variety of both performance and educational venues, the Smith Center is the first major performance hall in the United States to achieve LEED certification. From its inception, sustainability was planned into the project from the inside – glues, carpets and paints – and out – by utilizing energy-efficient windows, natural light and natural materials, and by recycling construction waste. And, using reclaimed land from a former railroad yard, even its site is a laudable reuse of city-owned resources.