DETROIT - Towering 30 stories over Monroe Street, the Greektown Casino Hotel is nearing completion, and will add another 400 rooms to the city's growing retinue of hotel space.

About 380 Hardhats are currently on the project, making the hotel ready for its first guests on Jan. 23, when 200 rooms will be available. The rest of the hotel will open Feb. 12.

"It's been a difficult project, but we've had an excellent workforce," said Dave Pettijohn, general superintendent for the construction management team of Jenkins/Skanska. "The majority of trades have helped us work through any issues that we've had."

Built atop a demolished parking deck, the new hotel and its adjacent new 13-level, 3,100-space parking deck - which opened a year ago - connects to Greektown Casino via a skyramp on the third floor.

Activity from restaurants in Greektown and the nearby Wayne County Jail and Frank Murphy Hall of Justice on the area's tight city streets have made building the hotel logistically difficult. Two buckhoists attached to the building have been removed in recent weeks, and now everything goes up and down in the building's internal elevators. "Moving people and materials around can make the site very congested," Pettijohn said.

In addition to the new hotel and parking garage, the permanent Greektown Casino complex will include a 25,000-square-foot gaming floor expansion (increasing the gaming floor to 100,000 square feet), a 1,500-seat entertainment theater, meeting and convention room space, a spa and additional restaurants. Total cost: about $475 million.

The Greektown Casino, which opened Nov. 10, 2000, is majority owned by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. It features nearly 2,400 slot machines and 92 table games in 75,000 square feet of Mediterranean-themed gaming space.

Pettijohn said 3,220 tradespeople have undergone safety training at the project, and there have only been two lost-time accidents: from a hernia and slip-and-fall.

"Our safety record has been very, very good," he said.

THE 30-STORY Greektown Casino Hotel looms over Monroe Street in Detroit. A Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the casino and hotel has complicated the construction process, and court proceedings this week will dictate the future of the casino and hotel.

SETTING UP A BASE for tile work in the Greektown hotel lobby is Mike Fry of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 1, working for Architectural Southwest Stone.