Suite Dreams

Kirk Baird

Thursday, March 1, 2001 | 9:03 a.m.

Suite facts

It's a taste of the good life.

Forget the chaos of being on the floor at a rock concert or fighting the bathroom lines during halftime at an XFL game.

For the lucky few, there's a better way: luxury suites and/or VIP rooms.

Whether custom-decorated with enough lavish furnishings to make Robin Leach jealous, or bare-bones, for many there's no better way to attend an event.

And for about 6,000 of the 130,000 spectators expected to attend the NASCAR Winston Cup race Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it won't get much better: giant suites, accommodating as many as 180 people, located two and three stories above the racetrack, all of which feature a private bathroom and bar.

Additionally, some suites are custom-furnished with such amenities as leather couches and chairs, coffee tables, recliners and big-screen TVs.

Oh, and there's also the bird's-eye view of the racing.

All this for only $60,000 a year.

It may seem like a steep price for luxury, but Howard Nemenz, vice president of sales and marketing for the speedway, said companies are willing to pay it. That's why nearly all of the 102 suites at the Speedway are leased.

"There's a corporate demand because they want this type of setting to entertain clients and do business," he said. "The amount of money they spend on this is mind-boggling, but it pays dividends."

Because of the demand, the speedway's smaller tracks also feature luxury suites. The rooms at the Strip, a quarter-mile track for drag racing, proved so popular that nine more are being added for a total of 26.

The suites, which lease for $35,000 per year, seat 36 people. That amounts to roughly $1,000 a head.

"But once you're up here, you want to come here all the time," Nemenz said.

That's certainly the way Tony Lenzie of Las Vegas said he felt at a recent Las Vegas Outlaws game at Sam Boyd Stadium.

Pros outweigh cons

A guest in a suite owned by Pepsico Inc., Lenzie said that the feeling of being isolated from on-field action was the only drawback to watching from a suite, but the convenience of not having to fight the crowds more than made up for it.

"Hopefully, I'll get to come back here again," he said.

The 13 suites at Sam Boyd Stadium have proven popular. Eleven of them are leased for $50,000 each, said Steve Stall- worth, associate director of the stadium. Because of the cost, corporations have leased them. For individuals there are the club seats, which go for $2,500 or $3,500, depending on location.

The club seats permit access to a lounge area directly behind the section that features catered food and a bar, in addition to couches, chairs and tables. Myriad televisions are in place so no one has to miss any of the game while inside the area. Similar to the luxury suites, there's a special section of parking available to the club-seat owners.

Mike Seifer, a Las Vegas Allstate Insurance agent, owns two $2,500 seats and also has "regular" seats on the 40-yard line. But after buying the club seats when they became available two years ago, he almost never sits anywhere else.

"I'm a person of creature comforts, and I'm pretty comfortable," he said.

Seifer is typical of many suite and club-seat owners, in that comfort is as important as attending the event itself, Stallworth said.

"It's not just about the seats, it's about everything else," he said. "The food, the convenience, the parking ... those are all reasons."

Stadiums aren't the only facilities with luxury suites. The Thomas & Mack Center has 30 of them -- standard and large -- all of which were leased out when the facility opened in late 1983.

Pick your size

The standard room seats 10 to 14 people and costs $65,000 a year, while the large room seats 16 to 20 and runs $100,000. Similar to their stadium counterparts, the suites appeal mainly to corporations.

The rooms are all customized, some lavishly, with wood paneling, theater-style seats, a bar and bathroom. (When the suites were built, no bathrooms were included; they had to be added later.)

There's also the Mandalay Bay Events Center, which, similar to Sam Boyd Stadium, features a combination of luxury suites and club seating.

The four private suites, which seat up to 16 people and feature a couch, two chairs, tables, a bar and two TVs, are sold out. Eight more are under construction and should be ready by April. (Mandalay Bay declined to disclose rates for the suites.)

The club seats, called "suite-level seats," are open to the public, with both availability and pricing depending on the event. The suite-level seats include access to a lounge area as well as a private bar and bathrooms.

Perhaps the nicest option, however, is at the House of Blues.

For example, as Al Martinez and Cathy Michelle relaxed in plush chairs at the back of Spanda, the VIP room at Mandalay Bay's House of Blues, it was easy to forget there was a concert going on -- if not for the closed-circuit broadcast of the performance on a big-screen TV nearby, that is.

But Martinez and Michelle hardly noticed the TV or the sounds wafting from the stage. It was the opening act performing, and they were preoccupied getting caught up with friends. Once the headliner, guitar prodigy Jonny Lang, took the stage, the two planned to move to their seats, located on Spanda's two-row balcony.

Exclusive accommodations

It's certainly a nice way to go, but it's also exclusive.

Spanda admission is available only to members of the Foundation Room, a private club at the House of Blues, or as a special guest of Mandalay Bay's casino, and must purchase a ticket to the event, which vary in price from show to show.

For Martinez, a Foundation Room member who attends up to 10 shows a year, there is no other way to enjoy a concert. There is a private bar and bathrooms, comfortable couches and chairs, and a line of small tables with chairs behind the balcony, all of which make Spanda as much a place to relax as to enjoy the show.

Because of this, the atmosphere of the room occasionally more resembles that of a cocktail party than of a concert, with well-dressed people oftentimes more concerned with conversation than the performance.

Which is one reason Michelle prefers to be on the floor. "You miss being around the people and being around the show," she said.

As exclusive as Spanda is, there's something even better: "sky boxes." Reserved for the VIPs, special cases or band members' families, the sky boxes are to the side of the stage, about 20 feet above the performers' heads.

Named B.B. King and Etta James after the legendary blues stars, the two rooms resemble the interior of a log cabin, with wood paneling as the main decor. In each room there's a table with candles and incense burning, chairs and a paneless window looking out over the stage.

With both rooms situated behind the stage curtains, it's about as close to feeling what it's like to be backstage as it gets. So much so, that some bands request no one be allowed to sit in the boxes, for fear guests will see or hear something they shouldn't before or after the band performs.

Russell Jones, general manager of the House of Blues, said after watching a concert from a sky box that it's difficult to watch from the floor.

For the majority of those who won't ever find themselves on the VIP list, however, that's something they'll never know.

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