Wynning Odds

Resort developer/designer Steve Wynn hit the jackpot in Sin City with his great vision, but the 68-year-old billionaire is still reinventing and expanding his empire. When the casino king plays, he always wins.

If being in Las Vegas feels like an escape from reality, like a warp hole with no end in sight to the lights, glitz, and gambling, then Steve Wynn has succeeded. Inspired by family trips to Disneyland and the Fountainebleau Miami Beach in the 1950s, the tsar of Las Vegas has build his own fantastical empire in Sin City, among towering edifices that blur the line between reality and fantasy.

“The idea of a world that was more perfect, more idyllic than the outside world struck me as a really cool thing,” says the 68-year-old billionaire with a net worth of about $1.6 billion. When the Fountainebleau opened in 1954, it was the greatest destination on earth; everybody all over came to the resort during the winters. And Disneyland was its younger version. “The Fountainebleau and Disneyland moved my father, mother, and I. Ben Novack and Walt Disney both created these emotional experiences that you can live in, wrap yourself in. My entrepreneurial spirit was very much tied to the notion of creating a place that was much better than the outside world. And that’s what I wanted to do—to build places like that.”

Indeed, the hotelier and casino king is the expert of inspiring awe. He arguably has made more impact on the Vegas skyline than anyone, starting with a small stake in the Frontier Hotel and Casino operation when he first arrived in Las Vegas and then with the Golden Nugget in the mid ‘70s, which he revamped and expanded. But Wynn struck gold when he revolutionized the hotel world and revitalized the Las Vegas Strip with the Mirage in 1989, Treasure Island in 1993, and Bellagio in 1998. Then when Vegas became too trite again, Wynn turned another corner and wowed the world with Wynn Las Vegas in 2005. And when the economic downturn halted spending nationwide, Wynn played the wild card and opened Encore a few days before Christmas in 2008.

The casino resort tycoon who keeps turning the heat up in Las Vegas has also turned the heat on Washington recently when discussing the future of the Wynn Empire: “Asia,” he says. With a Wynn and Encore in Macau and a third forthcoming hotel in China, Wynn has proclaimed on-air, “Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington.” Regardless of where the company will expand, one thing is certain—everything Steve Wynn touches turns to gold.

From Bingo to Boomtown Luster

The modern-day Renaissance man studied at the University of Pennsylvania cultural anthropology and English literature, not business nor real estate. Wynn’s mentor growing up was his high school English teacher, David Edwards, who taught him dangling modifiers and antecedent pronoun agreements, not entrepreneurship. And his exposure to the casino industry was merely a weekend job at his father’s bingo operation in Maryland. “My weekly allowance,” he says.

However, Wynn says he always had an eye for detail. “I always had a feeling about space and color and decorating. My mother was an interior decorator, and color coordination, fabrics, and textures were things that were discussed around the house.”

Sixty days before Wynn graduated from the Ivy League, his father died of complications from an open heart surgery, leaving $350,000 of debt. “My father had relieved me from running the bingo my last semester of college, because I was getting ready to go to law school,” Wynn says. “I had no idea what shape the bingo was in, but I came back and said I’d fix it. It took me 10 months to get the money back.”

Wynn decided he wanted to be a real estate developer and had his sights on 27 acres of raw real estate land next to the Baltimore International Airport, with the hopes of turning it into an industrial park. “But I didn’t have $1 million to buy it,” he says. “I had $20,000.” Through contacts, the 23-year-old reached the billionaire real estate and insurance tycoon John D. MacArthur. “Here I was in the presence of this 72-year-old famous man, who had an unfiltered cigarette hanging out of his mouth, listening to my pitch,” Wynn precisely recalls. “I offered him half the property if he lent me $1 million. He said no but asked for my card.”

Two weeks later, MacArthur called, asked Wynn to meet him at the Plaza Hotel in New York City, and offered him the opportunity to be an investor of the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. In 1967, Wynn and his wife, Elaine, moved to Sin City. “That was the beginning for me,” Wynn says. “With my 3% interest, I was the slot manager, vice president of the company, and assistant credit manager.”

He was sent to the Bally Gaming factory in Chicago for two weeks to learn about slots. “I was about as interested in this stuff as I was about jumping off the roof,” he cracks. Instead, 23-year-old Wynn made his first hire. He stole the chief of production from Bally Gaming that first day and offered him a job (and a higher salary) to become the head of slot mechanics at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.

“I did not stay to learn about the slot machines,” Wynn says of that day in Chicago. “Money comes in one end and out the other. That’s what I know about. The business is to get people to come to your place.”

The Game Plan

For more than 40 years, the genius businessman has raised the stakes in Las Vegas, but he’s quick to credit banker/financier E. Parry Thomas for much of his success. Wynn met the most powerful banker in Nevada at the demise of the Frontier Hotel era. “Thomas became my second father, and everything that has happened to me from that point forward is due to him.”

The banker lent Wynn $1.2 million to sell prime real estate to billionaire Howard Hughes. Wynn then took his profits and bought stock in the Golden Nugget, which he eventually took over. He also owned the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, N.J.

Still, prior to the 1990s, there was no glamour on the Strip, no elegance in the hotels. Vegas in the ‘70s and ‘80s was stuck in a time capsule. Then Wynn changed the façade of Las Vegas, starting with the Mirage in 1989, which was his first major Strip casino and hotel.

The visionary began creating a world everybody wanted to be part of. The erupting volcano at the Mirage, the sinking pirate ship at Treasure Island, and the fountains that dance to Italian singers at the Bellagio brought over-the-top entertainment and awe to Sin City.

Playwright Neil Simon is partially to thank for the onset of Wynn’s vision. “I was watching TV,” Wynn recalls. “Neil Simon was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson discussing (his comedy) Plaza Suite and Johnny said to Neil, ‘How do you do it?’ And Neil said, ‘Johnny, it’s not a hard concept; comedy lies in conflict.’”

Wynn pondered this idea the next day while parked across the street from the property that would be the Mirage in his 1985 powder blue Mercedes 280SL. “I thought, ‘What the hell kind of conflict could I set up here that would fascinate people?’ I remember saying to myself, ‘Suppose if what they see with their eyes don’t match with what they see in their head. Suppose if what you see is so out of sync, it doesn’t make sense.’” Conflict creates tension, and tension can bring people into his buildings, Wynn reasoned. At that moment, he thought of the musical South Pacific and the idea of bringing Bali Ha’i, the volcanic Hawaiian island from the movie, to the desert. He outfitted his first megaresort with a lush waterfall, indoor forest, and erupting volcano.

“People would then ask, ‘Could the inside of this place be as fanciful as the outside?’” he says. “That simple question was the same idea behind the pirate ship at Treasure Island and the fountains at the Bellagio.”

He never changed his philosophy until Wynn Las Vegas—and there he switched 180 degrees. Instead of themed hotels and showmanship, Wynn Las Vegas thrives on being non-Vegas with its sleek sexiness, hush-hush exclusivity, high-end retail boutiques, and country club coziness (there is a golf course at the hotel, after all).

“Las Vegas Boulevard may be a nice address, but it can be ugly; it can be tasteless; it can be harsh,” Wynn says. “I knew I had to change at Wynn. My audience was no longer the people on the street; it was the people in the hotel. Let them walk down to the country club for a change of pace and get away from the gamblers. I deliberately put the slots away from the restaurants, so when people sit down to dinner, they are not overwhelmed with overstimulation. People like different stimulations, and we respect that. This place acknowledges the diversity of your interests. You can come to my hotel and take an hour to look at great paintings and be quiet.”

Indeed, the many great art scattered throughout his resorts is another distinctive trademark of the Wynn Empire. The man who can see both the big picture and the meticulous details is notoriously known for his extensive art collection—with his largest inventories in Picasso and Matisse. Hanging in his apartment are two Picasso paintings from the famous 1932 series, which displayed at a Paris art show that year side by side. “Now 80 years later, here they are side by side in Las Vegas, Nev.,” gushes Wynn, who on the spot of the Haute Living interview, decides he’s going to Art Basel Miami Beach this year.

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