LAS VEGAS -- New York City has Grand Central Terminal. Boston has Faneuil Hall. Chicago has the Carson Pirie Scott & Co. building. San Francisco has Coit Tower. Las Vegas has . . . the La Concha Motel lobby.

Among such august architectural icons, kitschy La Concha --which most closely resembles a fly-in hamburger stand used by the Jetsons--might seem like a questionable candidate for historic preservation.

But, by year's end, if all goes according to plan, the airy, concrete and glass 1961-vintage lobby, with its three signature 28-foot parabolic arches, will be preserved for posterity at a cost of about $1 million. Preservationists cobbled together the money through state and local grants and donations.

Too high to fit under surrounding overpasses and too heavy to be lifted intact by helicopter, La Concha presented a logistical dilemma, said Suzanne Couture, a designer with Las Vegas-based Friedmutter Group, which is donating architectural services for the project.

California-based structural engineer Mel Green came up with the solution: cut and paste. Sliced into six pieces, crated and trucked about 2 miles to the other end of the Las Vegas Strip, the reassembled 1,000-square-foot lobby, with a 1,500-square-foot addition, will become the centerpiece of a new park and visitor center for the non-profit Neon Museum. The museum, which spearheaded the La Concha effort, has preserved many of Las Vegas' famous neon signs in its 3-acre Boneyard site.