always has been a city built on hopes and aspirations but only a handful of
true visionaries have had a unique and lasting impact of the growth and
direction of this desert outpost. Of the four pillars of
Vegas
Siegel, Howard Hughes and Liberace are gone but one architect remains, a man
who continues to reinvent this unique city to this day.
Part 4: The Man Who Reinvigorated
Steve Wynn was still a couple of years shy of becoming a teenager in 1952 when
he stood on a dusty patch of desert highway called the Strip and listened
intently as his father, a Maryland bingo parlor operator, told him of his dream
of expanding his business there. Michael Wynn died in 1963 but his dream – and
then some – never left the mind of his innovative son. It would take 26 years
but Steve Wynn would realize his father’s dream.
Typically, Wynn’s first steps into gaming weren’t timid ones. In the early
1970s, using money he’d earned in the family business, Wynn purchased a parcel
of real estate adjacent to
from Howard Hughes. The next year he sold the land to Caesars for a profit of
$760,000. He used the money to accumulate stock in the downtown Golden Nugget
and, by 1973, at the age of 31, was the youngest casino chairman in the history
of
Wynn next turned his attention to
paying $8.5 million for the Strand Hotel. He promptly demolished the
and built another Golden Nugget which, in 1987, he then sold to Bally’s for a
record $440 million.
Flushed with optimism and with his father’s dream still kicking around in his
head, Wynn then returned to
a city which, despite its gaming persona, still was in search of an identity.
Wynn defined it.
He did it by building The Mirage, a $630 million all-inclusive complex that he
promised “would have mystique, like a lady half-dressed.” It did.
The birth of The Mirage in 1989 redefined
ultimate tourist destination, the home of wondrous new sights and experiences,
where casino gambling and sports betting were the main but not the only
attractions. A tropic paradise of waterfalls and foliage, luxury
accommodations, gourmet restaurants, a rain forest, an exploding volcano, a
swanky shopping mall, rare white tigers, an aquarium with bottle-nosed
dolphins, and the city’s most spectacular – and expensive – show, Siegfried
& Roy, there never had been anything quite like
it. In fact, Wynn was forced to add a new term to the gaming lexicon just to
describe The Mirage. He called it a “megaresort.”
Suddenly, the Strip, which had not seen significant growth in several years,
was awash in megaresort projects. In the eight years
immediately after Wynn first unveiled his plans to build The Mirage, other
would-be entrepreneurs played follow-the-leader, adding 30,000 rooms and $3
billion worth of investments to the Strip.
The success of The Mirage spawned the Excalibur, the castle-configured casino
with 4,000 rooms. Then came
next door to the Excalibur. Hardly content to watch others build, in October of
1993, Wynn added another property of his own,
a pirate-themed facility adjacent to The Mirage. Two months later the city
welcomed the MGM Grand, with 5,005 rooms, the largest hotel, er, megaresort, in the world.
Wynn would later build Bellagio, on the site of the
old Dunes Hotel on the corner of
and
and, most recently, Wynn Las Vegas, his high-end signature property that now
stands on land where the Desert Inn once stood.
”
have the creative genius of people like Steve,” said former Governor Bob
Miller.
Wynn, the architect of the modern Las Vegas gaming and sports betting
expansion, just smiled at the remark, comfortable with the presence (and
accolades) of elected officials. In fact, Wynn has golfed with many politicians,
including Arizona Senator Sen. John McCain, the presumptive 2008 presidential
nominee of the Republican Party.
So how did it feel to rub elbows with the power elite?
McCain never said.
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This article was written on behalf of OffshoreInsiders.com |