Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Strip is a changin’

Sunday, March 12, 2000 | 8:59 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

What price shareholder value?

I am still in shock, not at the result of the recent MGM purchase of Mirage Resorts, but of the lightning-quick speed with which it happened. We barely had time to figure out who was on what side, or what issues needed to be considered before the pirate ships were swallowed up by something big enough to hide a volcano under its balance sheet. But there it is. And here Las Vegas is, trying to sort out the force of nature that changed the way we thought of ourselves and our city in the literal blink of an eye.

This isn't the first time the landscape has been changed so rapidly, but it is the first time anything of this magnitude has happened. In the old days, the very old days, one of Las Vegas' first dreamers was removed from the top spot as Las Vegas' premier builder in a most permanent and violent way. When Bugsy Siegel's underworld brethren thought he had become more of a liability than an asset, an assassin was dispatched to do the same to him -- forever. The Flamingo Hotel changed hands in the spring of 1947 -- sort of -- and the rest is history.

When Las Vegas' next builder, a decent and friendly man named Wilbur Clark, got on the short side of the bankroll he needed to finish the Desert Inn Hotel, a group of "investors" from Cleveland led by Moe Dalitz provided the capital required. They left Wilbur's name on the marquee and allowed him a certain level of dignity, but it was clear that he was out and they were in.

And, when things got a bit hot for Lefty Rosenthal and his friends at the Stardust many years ago, a car bomb sent the message that it was time to leave -- which Lefty did in a hurry -- and a change of ownership took place. In each of these cases, what many of us considered immutable, changed practically without notice. But nothing that had happened before could have prepared Las Vegans for what happened almost overnight in the city that never sleeps.

It isn't really that it happened that is most surprising, but more to whom it happened and why it did that poses the most intriguing questions. For who would have thought that the man who has done so much to change the face of Las Vegas tourism these past 25 years, and in whom the citizens were fully prepared to applaud for the next quarter century, would be whisked away, not by the violence of the bullet or a car bomb which, admittedly, is old-time persuasion, but by the financial fury of Wall Street and stockholders looking for value -- and not much else.

If there is a good side to this, it is that Kirk Kerkorian is the man behind the magic that made the home of Siegfried and Roy disappear from Steve Wynn's plate and reappear on his own. Kirk has done well for Las Vegas and vice versa. And while his method of operation is substantially different from Steve's, his determination to provide a measure of quality should provide the assurance that what Steve has built will continue for some time. But let's be clear: Life will be different.

And before the titles change hands, there will be some hard decisions for the state of Nevada to make. I remember in 1969 when the bashful billionaire, Howard Hughes, wanted to add a seventh hotel to his hastily assembled collection of the city's finest, only to be told by the gaming authorities that one more would give him too much control over the industry, over the employees, over the purveyors and over the apparatus of government. Las Vegas, it was feared, would go from an industry town to a company town and officials wanted none of that. I am pretty sure that the laws on the books, because of the sheer size and power of the deal contemplated, will give way to the will of the parties, but it remains to be seen what safeguards will be enforced to deal with the policy questions that bring the laws into focus.

That's all process, though. What Las Vegas will be missing when the dust settles is the creative genius that has marked Steve's career in our town. He has single-handedly set the tone and created the shelter under which all other builders and dreamers could fulfill their own visions -- safely. He has also spoken out on issues of great importance when everyone else in the industry has been content to stay silent. I haven't always agreed with him, but I have always admired his ability to say what's on his mind in a persuasive and responsible way. Whose voice will we hear now? Whose dreams will provide the inspiration for the rest of Las Vegas? Who will the magazines simultaneously pick as the best and worst in Las Vegas?

There are some who delight in what has happened and blame it on the lack of shareholder value existing in Mirage stock. Kirk has always been smart enough to recognize a great value when he sees it. So now he will own the prize and, I believe, continue to do justice to it. But I see in this lesson a danger signal to those who would come to Las Vegas to build the next wave of dreams. Public money is an essential ingredient -- just like mob money was 50 years ago -- to the successful construction and operation of Las Vegas' multithousand-room extravaganzas. And, as long as the public is involved, the demands for quarterly improvements will always outweigh the desire for those intangibles that make one place more beautiful and more pleasing than the place down the street.

By separating Steve Wynn from the Mirage that he built, MGM has changed the way all Las Vegas will think about the inevitability of tomorrow. There is some good in that and some bad. I trust that one day soon, Steve Wynn will be back to his old ways, building the best that Las Vegas can offer and leading the way for others to follow. That would mitigate the bad.

Life is about change. Boy, are we living now.