Wynning America
Every historical era in America has a city that bests symbolizes its spirit. Boston was the veritable capital in the ferment of the Revolutionary War. Chicago embodied Industrial America of 19th century. New York stood as monument to the waves of immigrants that poured through Ellis Island in the early 20th Century. For an historical moment before and after World War Two, the center of gravity shifted toward the auto factories of Detroit.
But in modern America, in its media-marinated popular culture, , when entertainment replaces reflection, when opinion over-rides knowledge, when immediate gratification is exalted and the past and the future are downgraded it seems that the City of the Eternal Now — Las Vegas"”has become our virtual capital. (I've argued this at length in my book of last year, The Last Honest Place in America.)
Now, it seems, Las Vegas, is poised to begin yet a new chapter in its astounding history"”and maybe be host to one more boom. This week gambling and resort tycoon Steve Wynn opens his palatial Wynn Las Vegas.
Imagine a price tag of $2.7 billion for a hotel-casino. It's beyond breathtaking. Wynn, of course, set off the New Las Vegas Revolution in 1989 when he smashed all spending records and inaugurated his $700 million Mirage (a property he sold off a few years back).
Critics back then laughed at Wynn, noting that his junk bond-leveraged baby was just what he called it — a mirage. They figured his casino had to clear a cool million dollars a day just to break even. He was raking in twice that amount almost from the onset.
Wynn's example led to the explosion of a string of similar mega-resorts: The Luxor, the MGM Grand, the Mandalay Bay, The Venetian and Wynn's sumptuous Bellagio. The entire southern half of the fabled Las Vegas strip was rebuilt with billions of dollars and helped make Las Vegas the most dynamic, most accessible employment and housing market in America.
Wynn's entrepreneurial genius was to create a script in which middle-class Everymen could feel themselves at the center of some unprecedented spectacle. A far cry from the original grungy gambling halls on downtown Vegas' Fremont Street. Here's how the Associated Press describes the new Wynn Las Vegas:
Wynn has finally taken full advantage of the sun that illuminates this desert valley. Light pours into many of its spaces, providing a sense of openness.
Vibrant and distinct colors are everywhere from the powerful red carpets with purple and green to the chocolate-brown ceilings.
Wynn Las Vegas, located on the northern end of the Las Vegas Strip, also embraces nature. He has built an atrium that connects the property's two main entrances filled with an array of mums and orchids. His restaurant, Okada, boasts an authentic Japanese garden with a pond teeming with vegetation found traditionally in Asia.
Other restaurants have patios facing a "Lake of Dreams," a watery area hidden behind a mountain of evergreen trees.
Wynn figures he can pull in a quarter billion dollars a year just from the resort's eateries. Chew on that figure for a moment. His business strategy —unrolled fifteen years ago at the Mirage"”already turned traditional formulas on their head. Until he came upon the scene, casinos were king in the Vegas resorts and the hotel, restaurants, bars, and showrooms served as loss-leader portals to funnel the suckers to the slots and card tables. Gambling revenues were as much as twice as much of that produced by the rooms and restaurants.
Steve Wynn, by contrast, turned every aspect of the mega-resort into profit centers and nowadays most of the Strip's biggest properties earn more from their hotel, food, and entertainment operations than they do from gambling per se. This principle is reflected in the Wynn Las Vegas' very architecture:
Perhaps most striking about Wynn Las Vegas is that the traditional casino layout has been scuttled. The casino is no longer centerstage, dominating a visitor's attention and wallet. Many of the high-end restaurants and upscale shops like Louis Vuitton and a Ferrari-Maserati dealership can be reached without traversing the casino floor"¦
But the real switch for Wynn this time around, more than 15 years after he opened The Mirage, is what he has done with his name"¦Wynn is omnipresent. His name is on the casino's parapet, the two marquees and slot machines. He has a slew of stores, carrying Wynn clothes, Wynn china and Wynn home furnishings.
Even before the doors opened at 12:01 a.m. PDT Thursday, people had begun to line the streets in anticipation. Wynn, who has become a household name, had everyone wondering whether he could top the Bellagio and what lay hidden inside.
If this new venture is successful — and the bet is it will be"”it's likely that it will touch off another multi-billion dollar building revolution and job bonanza. The hotels in Wynn's neighborhood on the northern stretch of the Strip are almost all faded relics of another era: the Frontier, the Riviera, the Sahara. They serve today as nothing more than low-end dormitories for tourists who want to gawk at the mega-wonders on the southern end of the Las Vegas Boulevard strip.
If the new Wynn property prospers, the race will be on to snap up the surrounding hotels, bulldoze them and build even bigger.
Unlike Detroit, of course, Las Vegas produces nothing tangible. It merely dispenses 'round-the-clock industrial-sized and alternating doses of despair and hope. And who is to say in which proportions?
April 28th, 2005 at 12:19 am
“The entire southern half of the fabled Las Vegas strip was rebuilt with billions of dollars and helped make Las Vegas the most dynamic, most accessible employment and housing market in America.”
With staggering environmental (and ultimately social) costs that will be borne by generations to come.
But your insights about Vegas are important Marc.
April 28th, 2005 at 12:53 am
Totally off topic Marc– but awhile back you recommended the anti-MOVE blog by Tony Allen. A very interesting read indeed. Well it seems that Tony is alleging that he and his family are getting violent threats from some of MOVE’s supporters. Maybe you or your readers might want to check this out. My apologies again for being off the thread’s topic.
April 28th, 2005 at 1:09 am
Simon.. thnaks I’ll check it out.
Green Dem: but of course ur right. I make no moral endorsement of any of this. I merely report the facts. Indeed the rise of all industrial centers have wrought environmental damaga. Vegas is no different. Except it creates a whole series of other problems as well.
April 28th, 2005 at 5:25 am
What’s happened with Vegas reminds me of what’s happened with Dubai. The UAE thrived because it pumped oil out of the ground, Nevada thrived because it pumped dollars out of people’s pockets. Something got it all started in each case. There was no there, there, out in the desert, nor any reason for a there to be there. But now they are both indisputably … there.
I imagine a future in which the world has run out of oil, and our great-grandchildren’s societies send small teams of archeologists to study these places, and to marvel at the insanity of them. “Yes, people really did travel hundreds, even thousands, of miles, propelled by fossil fuels the whole way, just to come to these places that didn’t actually produce anything, places that didn’t even have much intrinsic scenic value to start with. They were simply Destinations: places to travel to; places to eat, shop, meet, sleep, party, prowl, gamble and gawk; places to leave.”
(Of course, nobody’s ever going to write a screenplay called “Leaving Dubai”. Nicolas Cage wouldn’t be able to find alcohol, and Elizabeth Shue wouldn’t be able to show much leg.)
April 28th, 2005 at 6:58 am
I am compelled by a work obligation to visit Vegas each June for several days. Much of that time is spent in meetings but there is ample time for partaking of all that is the Vegas experience. I am fascinated by the place. I don’t know why. My interest may be along the lines of NASCAR fans who watch in the hopes of seeing a crash.
The sights, the sounds, the people…
As for the scenic value, well, I live in a place full of trees, hills, and water (fresh and salt), which I love, but I find tremendous scenic beauty in Vegas. And I’m not talking about the buildings and people.
Even the heat is incredible. Stepping out of the hotel at midnight and feeling like you are being hit in the face by the hot exhaust from a bus is so foreign. I visited the Dam one June day when it was 130 degrees outside. 130 degrees! But, of course, it was a dry heat. Everything is brown, even the mountains. Coupled with the garish contrast of the Strip, well…
Or maybe I’m just a hick from Boston who is easily impressed.
April 28th, 2005 at 8:57 am
I’m not fond of Vegas, but Nevada has a rustic appeal that is the antithesis of its largest city. I’ll traversing the whole thing next month.
April 28th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Thank goodness Wynn “embraces nature.” There’s nothing more natural than a Japanese pond garden in the middle of a desert. Real nature, however, is worthless because it ain’t right near an airport and mall and you can’t make a buck off it.
April 28th, 2005 at 10:22 am
“It merely dispenses ’round-the-clock industrial-sized and alternating doses of despair and hope. And who is to say in which proportions?”
…. Excellent closing line.
April 28th, 2005 at 10:28 am
The folks at the slot machines disturb me the most – they all have this sad, vacant stare. At least the people at the craps tables seem to be enjoying themselves.
April 28th, 2005 at 11:08 am
Writing this live from Las Vegas… Have just toured the new Wynn property and frankly the most startling thing is how he could have spent a billion dollars more than he did on the Bellagio on this latest palace of kitsch and pseudo-taste. The biggest difference, as far as I can tell, is that the name “Wynn” or “Steve Wynn” is plastered just about everywhere. Who knew that ego-stroking on such a monumental scale came at such a price tag?
Vegas altogether strikes me as being in danger of losing its cachet as a place of good middle-class union-protected jobs along with cheap living — the engine that drove its growth in first wave of the Wynn revolution in the 1990s. The living, like the hotel resorts, most definitely is not cheap any more. One senses the corporate casino owners are sucking up all the revenues and leaving little to the townsfolk, who have to deal with high prices, smog, gridlocked traffic, inadequate schools and hospitals etc etc etc.
Have to agree with Marc, though, that judgements of any kind — of morality, taste, social observation etc etc — pale in the face of the incontrovertible fact that the schmucks are all too happy to be taken in by this bricks-and-mortar (and marble and glass and steel and rockery and water) mirage in the desert. They were lining the Boulevard until 3am last night and were packing the poker rooms and blackjack tables at 7.30 this ayem.
Good luck to ‘em. Proof, as I think Marc points out in his book, that the surest bet in a Las Vegas casino is owning the place.
April 28th, 2005 at 11:23 am
(true story) Too Many, last time I went to Vegas, I took along a copy of `The Zombie Survival Guide – Complete Protection From The Living Dead’ by Max Brooks…it contains valuable information on how to ward off slot machine folk.
April 28th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
Marc,
I live in Las Vegas/N Las Vegas and I am planing on going to Wynn’s casino soon. I never go when a casino opens. Instead I hide in my bed with the covers over my face. I do not want the traffic to backup to my apartment.
I went to the Green Valley and Palms after their Grand Openings much more pleasant. Go on the middle of the week in the middle of the day and it will be wide-open spaces.
The BBC did a small piece on Wynn’s casino. You can catch it on the live feed.
April 28th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
People are attracted by the spectacle. I was in Vegas at the end of 12/1999 and one of the best things was the fountain around Wynn’s Bellagio, playing Sinatra in time with squirting jets. It was magnificent. So evocative of a “got the world on a string” ethos of the fifties. It’s all romanticism for me — I was not alive then.
The crowd loved it. The side of the pond was packed. Two dads from the midwest were next to me with a six-pack in a grocery bag. This was their entertainment for the night, while their wives were entertaining the kids.
All those profits feed back into an ever-more-complex illusion, making for an often flush, intoxicating vibe.
(That’s the upside. Glassy-eyed slots players and gambling addiction are the downside.)
Mavis, of course Japanese gardens — even the classic, ancient ones — are artificial creations and not strictly nature. Boulders carted in from elsewhere, streams diverted, …. E.g.,
http://www.jgarden.org/gardens.asp?ID=20
April 28th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
too many steves- that was quite eloquent and beautifully put.
And why oh why can’t the little people find appropriate leisure past times? Something more tasteful and less garish? I’m thinking little New England cottages and listening to the harpischord and reading poetry to each other, or perhaps returning to subsistence farming which should take care of the excess leisure time and cut down on the amount of neon…..those poor saps. Imagine enjoying something like Disneyland or Vegas?
April 28th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
Las Vegas accepts your money given voluntarily, the house only keeps a small percent which is plenty to run its operations, and it gives you a chance to win and have fun at the same time. Contrast that to what happens when your money goes to Washington, D.C. As the IRS says, what goes here, stays here.
If I were changing our tax system, I would pick one hundred and one tax returns at random. Fifty of the winners would receive double their taxes back, fifty would have a week of room and meals comp’d at the nation’s capital, and the last one would get to sleep in the White House–sort of like a presidential suite. Washington could learn something from Vegas.
April 28th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
Well Marc…dam if you do not open a can of worms about Vegas that would, by my take require another new book or two to explain this City in terms of the past decade and right now…CURRENT!
I of course live here as you know, for about a decade now…what I see as a local, and in digesting this past decade here — I will try to say in just a few short sentences, won’t make that mark I am sure, and no doubt not say most of what I am thinking…but I am a native of LA and view it in that perspective for a vis a vis.
Vegas is now a complete Bannana Republic…the main stay of locals are the workers for the hotels…my guess would be about 60%…the other 40% are mixed…military retirees in Nellis and Henderson…the rest mixed between two classes, some of what is left of what we used to call fondly the slightly upper middle class…who live in the NW of the Valley…who actually retired with some funds other than fixed pensions/ss checks….the others…and this is very small…less than 1%…with true wealth living in the outskirts of man made cities surrounding the foothills. For the new to be locals the past couple of years and now…almost totally latinos….and that is an obvious given…LA finally meeting Vegas in terms of the majority of the employment.
There are for the locals, no decent schooling for their children, inadequate medical/police and fire dept facilities….the city expanded too greatly and nothing has even remotely caught up in terms of services for the citizens.
Food/housing…..all fast take out…good ethnic food is limited to the ethnic communities, of which there are many and zoned off by social standards as usual…there are absolutely NO middle class restaurants that have ever made it here this past decade…as a way of expressing what is happening, has happened here….you MUST go the the tourista hotel/resorts for fine dinning that make even Beverly Hills look cheap for the rip off…housing now needs many people to pay rents/mortgages…and is only by about 20% versus LA cheaper…quite shocking…and known this past year as the crap housing, and I mean crap by building standards escalted upwards of 45% and more…..
The Strip now looks like Manhattan in terms of street traffic…has thousands of trolls walking the streets each day, similar to Revolution Blvd in TJ from the old days gone by…too poor to stay in the hotels…to poor to eat in the hotels…just trolling the streets to be NEXT too what they feel is exciting…..
High rollers are in the comped suites, gambling off the main casinos…meaning of course the money people you would never see…
The “Clubs” which are major now in each resort give birth to all the drunken/drug culture for those under 30…..and the beat goes on…..
Then too the Manhatinization…not my word, the new trendy word here for the 50 or so high rises planned for the strip, that only about a dozen or so will be built…but none the less…our good old Mayor sees us now as a new age Manhattan…with maids quarters starting at 4 hundred thousand going up to the multi millions in cost……..yeah sure right…not even enough of the high roller Asians, let alone thousands of time share people to keep this new fantasy alive…..
More than I wanted to say in a good fashion and longer than I wanted to post….stopping…need to write a dam book about this myself…as this is a true God Forsaken City…..in all that paltry old time meaning I just suggested,,,,,,
April 28th, 2005 at 7:03 pm
Posting was temporarily suspended as the contributors to this site were glued to the President’s press conference. You may now resume posting.
April 28th, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Thanks, Marc. Fascinating as always.
I dunno though, I think Wynn may lose on this bet. I don’t see a long run of sustained growth like there was in the 90′s to fuel expansion in Vegas, which to me is critical.
Trips to Vegas are optional, and among the first things cut when times go bad. I don’t think the convention business either will be enough to keep the town going in terms of rate of expansion. I would not be shocked, frankly, to see the place undergo some significant contraction. I think it’s overbuilt for what the market is. There are also hard limits on water and waste disposal out in the desert that will make expansion past a certain point VERY expensive (though not physically or fiscally impossible, just VERY costly).
April 28th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
There was an interesting take on this in today’s Christian Science Monitor. Some local commentary on the crumbling infrastructure that hides behind the glitz and glamour.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0428/p01s02-ussc.html
April 28th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
I think the elderly and the poor should take what money they have (less and less now that Medicaid is being cut, and so on) and bet it on same game in Vegas. They would have a better chance than leaving it to this adminstration
April 29th, 2005 at 3:42 am
Hey, I wouldn’t take away their ability to go to Vegas and sit at a slot machine until they die – or recommend or force them to do anything different – I was just noting that they don’t appear to be having any fun.
And, seriously, I can’t listen to a harpsichord, the sound makes the powder drop out of my wig and onto my shoulders, which is, like, embarassing.
Double
April 29th, 2005 at 11:33 am
Are there two guys named Jim Rockford posting here? That last one made perfect sense.
April 30th, 2005 at 12:14 pm
Donald Trump must be green with envy.
Las Vegas hasn’t been about gambling for several years, it seems to me, since it reinvented itself as the family vacation spot.
But Marc’s right about the restaurants – 25 years ago every major hotel had a gourmet dining room (consisting of about five heavy, rich french or continental entrees) and a coffee shop. Now it seems every other great restaurant in the country has a branch in Las Vegas.
So Marc, what are the chances Oscar becoming Governor?
April 30th, 2005 at 12:20 pm
Here’s a link to a 1998 New York Magazine article, Clash of the Titans, back when Trump was outspending Wynn.
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/biz/features/2235/
May 1st, 2005 at 9:04 pm
to loose money gambling, drink booze, and look at naked girls. I never really READ into Vegas. I know I lost money but the high was worth it. When you are in Vegas you are caught up in the flash and when the hangover comes you are just worried about getting home and hiding your loses from the wife.
Flash forward about 8 years. The city does not have much allure to me. It is like Disneyland for grown ups. The site of many debauchorous bachelor parties in the last few years. The kind of place where an otherwise decent friend of mine cheats.
But Vegas is modern capitalism personified. I work in the music business and sell music mostly to young people (they buy most music anyway). It is an utter fucking feeding frenzy. Things that we never would have thought of doing 8 years ago are not totally acceptable. The gloves are off. Anything goes. It is “gonzo” capitalism.
I attended a music fest in Jersey this weekend and I really felt sorry for what the kids were enduring. I know scholars do not take popular culture seriously, but what kind of citizens can this spectacle create? Do we know how the brain deals with non stop branding, sampling, etc…???
Boomburbs in SoCal, while nice and livable, are designed solely to suit the corporations that fill the mini malls in the center of town (no more town hall and common). It is like Vegas or the Epcott Center.
Capitalism is becoming a round of cards. Every artist we market, we engage in a pounding rush of energy, throwing everything at the target market. Enron and the other debacles are only proof of how the global casino is going.
Yet we are all the “idle grasshopper†just watching this all go by without least bit of concern. We are all captivated to a degree by something… some part of consumerism/government propaganda…
I mean where are we headed here? Vegas is kind of hellish for me and I hope that Marc is wrong.
May 13th, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Wow, you’re so smart, Marc Cooper, you made an observation! You’ve got a…what do you call them things…a THESIS! Boy, Marc Cooper, if only you could shake those dodgy “Leftist” associations, you could be well on your way to being one a them there, uh…whatcha call them things…PUNDITS!
What a fucking tool.
October 24th, 2005 at 1:22 am
I am really excited to see the high rollers room. Although I am not a high roller, I am just curious to know what is inside. Aside from the abundant ebtertainment, I wonder what is in store inside the high rollers room. I would like to take a sneak peak and do a little high roller impersonation.
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