There's no question about who will be developing most of that land -- one of the two companies that now control the vast majority of rooms on the Strip.

And some experts say they don't need a crystal ball to know what that future will look like.

MGM Mirage, the state's biggest private landowner and the Strip's largest operator, owns 832 acres of land on Las Vegas Boulevard. About 350 acres of that are "undeveloped or underdeveloped," Chief Executive Terry Lanni said last week.

That includes the 66 acres of land at the Boardwalk casino site that the company will transform into its $5 billion Project CityCenter by late 2009.

It also includes lots of vacant land, land being used for surface parking and land with low-rise buildings on it -- basically any land that isn't earning very much for the company.

MGM Mirage isn't saying much about other vertical projects further down the road, though Lanni gave one hint of things to come last week during the Global Gaming Expo industry trade show.

The company could "level some garages" and build more "user-friendly" garages, Lanni said during a panel session.

Other experts also are thinking out loud.

MGM Mirage will "absolutely" look to build more high-rise type buildings near its casinos like it is doing with the Residences, a complex of condo-hotels behind MGM Grand, Deutsche Bank stock analyst Marc Falcone said last week.

Carlton Geer, director of CB Richard Ellis' Global Gaming Group business unit, believes a property like the Bellagio, right next door to the future CityCenter complex, could look much different years from now.

Bellagio only uses about 55 of its 80 acres for revenue generation, leaving open plenty of opportunities to build upward, Geer told a group of interested real-estate watchers at Global Gaming Expo last week.

"Large surface parking for employees, guest parking garage with no revenue generation on the roof and an 8-acre lake are a product of low land prices," Geer said.

After all, Steve Wynn bought the Dunes property for only $70 million in 1993, when land prices were low. Bellagio takes up about 80 acres of the 164-acre site, he said.

Removing the lake? A world-famous attraction that's now familiar to CNN- watchers from Tulsa to Tallahassee? That's crazy talk.

At tomorrow's prices, even today's prices, companies can't afford not to redevelop their land to maximize value for shareholders, Geer said.

"In the next ten years, we would not be surprised to see the lake in front of Bellagio cease to exist in its present form and substituted with a higher density, more profitable use," he said.

CityCenter is a perfect example of the kind of high-density, New York City-style development in Las Vegas' future. Built on 66 acres versus Bellagio's 80 acres, CityCenter packs in an eye-popping number of buildings and rooms.

Bellagio now has about 3,900 rooms attached to the main casino versus CityCenter's planned 4,000-room casino resort. Then there's an extra 1,649 condo units, two 400-room hotels and roughly 500,000 square feet of retail space. (Bellagio has about 100,000 square feet of retail).

Falcone believes that other mixed-use type projects, similar to CityCenter in density, will take shape elsewhere on the Strip. At Harrah's properties, perhaps? Why not, Falcone says.

In this world of skyrocketing real estate prices, few companies besides MGM Mirage and Harrah's will have pockets deep enough to be able to afford to redevelop in the first place.

At $20 million per acre in land costs, the owners of a property that makes, say, $25 million in operating cash flow per year "would be better off selling it" if they can't redevelop, Geer said.

The idea of pocketing money for land that's now worth more than four times what properties were sitting on just a few years ago is hard, if not near impossible, to pass up.

Westward Ho, which is expected to be sold by year-end, sits on at least 12 acres. At $15 million per acre -- an aggressive, yet believable estimate -- 12 acres would go for $180 million. Now that's crazy talk.

Heard at Global Gaming Expo

Global Gaming Expo wasn't without a few choice sound bites, many of which came from Harrah's Chief Executive Gary Loveman, the industry's occasional wry humorist. Here are a few samples from a panel session with Loveman and his chief rival, MGM Mirage executive Terry Lanni.

"That included all the memorabilia." -- After Lanni mentioned that Harrah's paid about $20 million per acre for its purchase of the Imperial Palace hotel and casino. "I suspect eBay will be getting that very soon," Lanni replied.

"Surprise -- I'm for it." -- When asked by a member of the Wellesley Chamber of Commerce in Massachusetts in attendance about Loveman's position on gambling in his home state. Massachusetts has so far opposed efforts to legalize casino gambling in spite of Loveman's insistence that the state is already gambling-hungry from its lottery and race tracks.

In spite of Starbucks stores locating "within 100 yards of every human being our consumption of $5 beverages has gone up." -- When asked about whether the spread of casinos across the United States would siphon business from existing properties.

"...(E)veryone was on ether." -- Commenting on the fact that state law requires Mississippi casinos to be built over water. Loveman and other casino bosses have called for a change in the law after Hurricane Katrina, which picked up entire buildings and dashed them ashore.

Liz Benston covers gaming for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4077 or by e-mail at benston@lasvegassun.com.