The news today is filled with articles about Steve Wynn’s New Resort: Wynn Las Vegas. CNN reports that the $2.7B resort, which is located on the northern end of the strip is a 2,700-room tower, richly decorated with textured wall coverings, dramatic draperies, mosaic floors and whimsical light fixtures. Curved escalators lead down to a patio facing a large pool with a 70-foot wall of water cascading at its back. Periodically, the wall turns into a multimedia theatrical show complete with animatronic creatures. Atriums and floor-to-ceiling windows in many areas bring daylight in and fresh flowers are abundant. A 180-foot man-made mountain covered with full-grown Aleppo pine trees looms like a regiment of guards blocking the hotel’s entrance from the street, forcing visitors to come inside to see, for instance, the 100 parasol light fixtures hanging from the ceiling that mechanically dance up and down to music.
But progress is always at a cost. The article mention the cost on the Wynn side: The cost to build the 2,716 rooms — minimum size 630 square feet and many appointed with multiple flat-screen LCD televisions — was $1 million each. This is Wynn‘s first hotel after selling his previous hotel chain, Mirage Resorts, to MGM Grand (which itself just swallowed Mandalay Resorts to become a combined company with about $7 billion in revenues and 70,000 employees, that controls a majority of the hotel rooms and about 40 percent of the slot machines on the famous Las Vegas Strip (ownership of 24 hotel-casinos, including The Mirage, Bellagio, MGM Grand, Treasure Island, Excalibur, Monte Carlo, Luxor and Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas)). But I don’t care about that cost. My hobby is history. I care about the historical cost.
The Wynn Las Vegas was built on the site of the former Desert Inn (link requires IE), once the ritziest of strip hotels. The DI was the brainchild of Wilbur Clark. It was constructed with $6.5 million in various funds, had 300 rooms, and opened on April 24-25, 1950, almost exactly 55 years before Wynn Las Vegas opened. I’m familiar with the hotel: my parents had their honeymoon there, according to pictures I’ve seen. After a series of owners, the hotel was evenually owned by Howard Hughes, who lived there in his later years. How does the new compare with the old? The only paper to remember the past, the LV Review Journal, ased Bob Maheu, the former front man for multimillionaire Howard Hughes, who once owned the Desert Inn where Wynn Las Vegas now sits, for his impressions. He said that Wynn did what Hughes never could have done — improve on a location. “In its day, the Desert Inn was a great property,” Maheu said. “Steve has created the city’s greatest hotel.”
Still, even if WLV is great (and we’ll likely see it when Avenue Q moves there), we should remember the past: A tip of the hat to the old Desert Inn.
[Note: For those interested in Vegas history and changes, I highly recommend two sites: Nick Christenson’s Las Vegas Casino Death Watch and Deanna DeMatteo’s LV Strip History Website (which, alas is only viewable under IE due to a number of anti-theft measures).]
