LAS VEGAS -- The hotel visionary who altered
Vegas with such world-famous staples as the Mirage and Bellagio
kicked it up another notch Thursday by opening the world's most
expensive hotel-casino, a $2.7 billion behemoth that had its first
guests' mouths agape with wonder as they filed through an ornate
front hallway bedecked with more than 10,000 flowers.
Thousands rushed into the Wynn Las Vegas as casino mogul Steve
Wynn personally stood in the entrance shaking hands, posing
for pictures and thanking the rich and the common alike for
coming shortly after midnight to see his long-awaited masterpiece
at the north end of the Las Vegas Strip.
"Oh my God!" gasped Georgina Fields, 34, of Manchester, N.H.,
after a four-hour wait at the gate was rewarded with one of
the first glimpses. "Just look at the molding, the tile, everything.
It's just brilliant."
Even for this notoriously over-the-top desert travel destination,
the scale of the curved, copper-colored 49-story Wynn Las Vegas
is groundbreaking and lush. A 140-foot man-made mountain covered
with full-grown Aleppo pine trees stands guard out front to
block view of the property's entrance from the street, forcing
visitors to come inside to see, for instance, the dozens of
colorful parasol light fixtures that hang from the ceiling and
dance up and down to music on occasion.
To put it in context, a $2.7 billion, 217-acre property means
Wynn Las Vegas cost $1 billion more than the budget for the
1,776-foot Freedom Tower that New York plans to build on the
site of the World Trade Center disaster. With 2,716 lavish rooms
of at least 630 square feet on 49 floors, each appointed with
multiple flat-screen LCD televisions, Wynn spent an average
of $1 million per room on the property. That eclipses the prior
world record of $775,000 for the Grand Wailea Resort in Maui,
Hawaii.
In several cases, the hotel offers new features not available
at any other property on the Strip, such as an 18-hole golf
course designed by Wynn and golfer Tom Fazio, the only Manolo
Blahnik shoe shop outside of Manhattan and a Ferrari-Maserati
dealership.
But it's that mountain, which shrouds the property in its
mystique from one side and offers a backdrop for a series of
what Wynn calls "experiences" such as a water and light show
set against the hill, a 70-foot waterfall and a three-acre lake
from the other, that is most intriguing.
"The idea of this building was to create extended spaces,
to bring the outdoors inside and to transport the guest into
another realm," said spokeswoman Denise Randazzo. "The real
difference here is that we save all the really amazing features
for the resort guests."
Indeed, that's a conceit that reverses the precedent Wynn
himself set in 1989 when he opened the Mirage, at the time the
most expensive resort in history, with a waterfall that transforms
into a volcano every 15 minutes along the sidewalk in front
of the hotel. Four years later, Wynn opened the Treasure Island
with fiery live-action pirate show out front that goes off every
90 minutes, and then in 1998 he created the uber-elegant Bellagio
with a mammoth dancing fountain show that goes off on the nine-acre
lake every 15 minutes.
The property also draws inevitable comparisons to Wynn's prior
masterpiece, the Bellagio. It has a similar color scheme, the
same reliance on dramatic horticulture and water features and
even the same fonts on the signage.
What's different for Wynn Las Vegas, though, is that Wynn
turned his own concept inside out, hiding the sensory goodies
deep within the new hotel and making it less than accessible
to the masses. That's led to some wondering if a Vegas property
can thrive with little walk-by traffic and not a lot for the
public to do if they don't spend large sums of money.
"The market sector is that this is for will be a very small
figure," said Anthony Curtis, publisher of the Las Vegas Adviser
newsletter, who thinks Wynn Las Vegas will succeed nonetheless.
"Mr. and Mrs. Omaha will walk in and say 'OK, fine.' Then they're
going to say, I can't afford the $7 ice cream. And they'll leave."
Perhaps, but not on Thursday. With all the mystery surrounding
the opening, most of those who came in were determined to be
enthralled.
"I come to every casino opening," says Debra York, 40, from
San Mateo, Calif. "I just love Vegas and I come here all the
time. All I can say is that I want to stay at the Wynn now.
I'll save up some money - or maybe I'll win some!"
In opening the property, Wynn returns to the zeitgeist of
an industry he transformed. His publicly traded Mirage Resorts
Inc. was bought out by then-MGM Grand in 2000, leaving him without
a property in Las Vegas for the first time in three decades.
Wynn, 63, began his comeback by forming Wynn Resorts Inc., buying
the Desert Inn Hotel-Casino - legendary as where Howard Hughes
holed up for the waning years of his life in the 1970s - and
knocking it down.
His reputation is so impressive that stock in Wynn Resorts
zoomed from $13 when it went public in 2002 to a height of $75
by March 2005 without Wynn even turning on a single slot machine.
It's since settled in at around $55 a share, with investment
analysts bullish over prospects for the new hotel as well as
one under construction in Macau, China, and another possible
in Singapore.
Wynn, who is said to micromanage the design of the entire property
in matters large and surprisingly trivial despite a severe eye
disease that has left him with little peripheral vision, also
has legendary ego on par with pal Donald Trump. In fact, it's
part of the draw. Wynn's name is on a home furnishings and jewelry
store, the car dealership and a steakhouse, he narrates his
website and the audio tour for his personal art collection of
Picassos and Reniors at the property, he appeared standing atop
the resort in TV commercials and his face adorns a series of
slot machines. He scrapped plans to call the hotel "Le Reve,"
French for "The Dream" after director Steven Spielberg told
him the Wynn name had a better ring.
In the lead-up to the opening, Wynn made shockingly bold comments
about the hotel, comparing it favorably to the pyramids of Egypt.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal quoted him on Wednesday calling
the property, "more complex than any other structure in the
history of the world."
That sort of bravado comes with risks. For all the hype -
or perhaps because of it - some of those who entered Thursday
were less than overwhelmed. Vegas4Visitors.Com owner Rick Garman
waited with the crowds outside for hours to get in only to wonder
what Wynn spent $2.7 billion on.
"It's nice. It's pretty. But it's not something really wow
and different," said Garman, whose guidebook on Vegas is due
out later this year through Moon Handbooks. "I'm a little disappointed.
I was not blown away. Everybody I spoke to, almost universally,
would say, 'It's nice' but that was it. If my expectations were
too high, then Steve Wynn set them too high."
###
