Bush = Steve Wynn (Vegas)?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

During a recent visit to Las Vegas I became very interested in the recent history of the town, and how the era of the modern Vegas Strip Megacasino came to be. I read some books and articles on the subject.

One of the wonderboys of the Strip who particularly interested me is Steve Wynn, who started out the Mirage and Treasure Island before recently being bought out by the MGM/Kerkorian consortium, and now has a new megaresort ("Wynn") on the north end of the Strip.

In reading about Wynn, his story seemed kind of suspicious to me. It's hard to know for sure, but it has every appearance that he may have been a front man for other interests, hand picked by those interests, and the initial sweet deals that got him his start and got him his initial money created for him to give him a plausible start in the casino business and a plausible reason to be wealthy. I'll leave it to others to read up about his story, but particularly his first major deal buying a parking lot next to Caesars Palace, and then selling it back to them a short time later for millions...

Wynn was giving some presentation to some Wall Street types a couple few years ago, and instead of facts, figures, profit/expense etc., he literally sang show tunes from a show at his casino. Bizarre. Shortly thereafter he was bought out of the Mirage and Treasure Island by Kerkorian and MGM.

It's possible that the Steve Wynn myth is all as it is presented, but it brought to mind very much the shrub's stints with Arbusto oil and the Texas Rangers. Very much handed to the guy to make him money on turnover, and give him a plausible title as a "Texas businessman" to give him a foundation for his political career.

I guess the difference is that Wynn gives the impression of being a very bright and intelligent guy who was chosen as a front man, unlike the shrub, and that the organizations he fronted made a lot of money during his tenure.

[Ouabache]

1. Good work if you can get and you are not a sociopath & narcissist

like Bush

[librechik]

2. corruption and insider deals in Las Vegas???Impossible!

:eyes:

they're everywhere they're everywhere

[oasis]

3. Wynn doesn't surround himself with incompetents. Never did. (eom)

[localroger]

4. Wynn also blew up his own empire

Steve Wynn lost his original casino empire by spending it into the ground. He spent $3 billion building Bellagio and Beau Rivage, and wasted much of that money on frou-frou. He acted almost like the caricature version of Trump that Trudeau shows us in Doonesbury. A couple of examples: Gaming tables and chairs made from solid rosewood, costing several thousand dollars for ONE CHAIR, yet you'd never notice how "special" they were if the dealer didn't clue you in. Similar bucks for hand-inlaid tiles, hand-bevelled and etched glass in the Bellagio atrium-mall, individually hand-painted silk canopies throughout the casino.

At Beau Rivage, I heard a personal account by a builder who did the interior ceiling of the casino that the gold rectangle bordering each and every ceiling tile was GOLD LEAF. Wynn spent money like mad, he spent it on silly things on his "nothing but the best" philosophy.

Unfortunately, he already had the high end of the casino business saturated with his existing properties, especially the Mirage. When Bellagio opened the fat cats just went next door, leaving the Mirage to open $5 blackjack tables where once you'd never see anything below $25. Wynn's $3 billion expenditure didn't really get him much new business because there frankly aren't that many people in the world who can gamble at a level sufficient to keep such places open without wiping themselves out.<p>

Eventually Wynn was struggling to meet his loans, and he got bought out in a hostile takeover. He even had to buy his own art collection back from the company that bought his casino empire *sniff*.

Left with "only" $800 million to his name after this fiasco, he vowed to come back and pretty much started the lather, rinse, repeat cycle with the Wynn.

Also: The Wynn sits on the site of the old Desert Inn. Wynn swore up and down when he bought the DI that he wouldn't tear it down, but he did in fact implode it to build a brand new resort. That wasn't just aesthetics. DI was Howard Hughes' old place. Hughes had his own way of doing things, and he had promised many of those people that they would ALWAYS have jobs if they came to work for him. It was the only non at-will casino in the state AFAIK. And the only way Wynn could break those contracts was to demolish the casino. So screwing the workers was an important part of the deal.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. Yeah I visited the new Wynn place. Clearly geared towards very high

end gambler.

I really wonder looking at all the places in Vegas, how many people are there to gamble all the money to operate all these billion dollar skyscrapers.

[pitohui]

6. yes there are suspicious things abt wynn

what i like is the part abt a blind man collecting art to be respectable

i have no prob w. buying respectability but at least make it a little believable