Friday, Nov. 1, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.
Fifteen years ago, Las Vegas casino entrepreneur Steve Wynn changed local history by breaking ground on The Mirage -- a hotel that naysayers said would be a money loser. It turned out to be one of Las Vegas' biggest successes, defining a decade of booming growth for Southern Nevada.
Wynn will take a crack at repeating history after kicking off construction on Le Reve, a $2.4 billion hotel-casino project a quarter-mile north of The Mirage on the Las Vegas Strip.
Wynn and his wife, Elaine, presided over a half-hour groundbreaking event Thursday featuring 200 company associates with shovels, and tributes from Nevada's two U.S. senators. As Wynn and his employees turned the tan desert earth at the site just south of the former Desert Inn hotel-casino, the air beneath the warm, sunny skies was punctuated by a barrage of fireworks that echoed up and down the Strip.
When the property opens in April 2005, it will have 8,000 employees. The resort will have a 111,000-square-foot casino, 18 restaurants, the Strip's only 18-hole golf course, a gallery displaying the Wynns' art collection of works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne and Matisse, and the Strip's first full-service Ferrari and Maserati dealership. Guests ogled two Ferraris parked Thursday near the groundbreaking site.
"Steve Wynn has done more than any business leader in the history of Nevada," Democratic Sen. Harry Reid told about 100 invited guests. "Why? Because Steve Wynn dares to dream. Certainly the name for this new facility is appropriate, Le Reve (French for 'the dream.') He has been responsible for reinventing Las Vegas on more than one occasion."
Like Reid, Republican Sen. John Ensign compared Wynn with some of the leaders and visionaries the state has produced over history. He said that while he was honored to be asked to address the event, he was looking forward more to when Le Reve opens its doors.
"You can see all the drawings and models you want, but when Steve opens his places, you're spellbound," Ensign said. "All of us in Southern Nevada will benefit from it. You will raise the level for your competitors. In the long run, all Nevadans will benefit from this wonderful new project."
Ensign also noted the irony that some of Le Reve's biggest competitors will be hotels Wynn and his colleagues designed.
"Unfortunately, Steve, you did such a great job with The Mirage and then the Bellagio that now you have extraordinary places to compete against and you're competing against yourself," he said.
Wynn, flashing his trademark confident smile, then recollected the Mirage groundbreaking and remarked how convincing people to support the $585 million project -- the first hotel to break the $500 million price barrier -- was similar to his effort to get backing for the 2,700-room Le Reve.
"It (Mirage's startup) was important because it showed that people who understood money and whose business it was to estimate and understand the future believed in Las Vegas as a solid, dependable, reliable jurisdiction, a city with a better tomorrow than yesterday, a city with a great future," Wynn said. "I don't think that any of us in 1987 understood exactly how prophetic and how powerful those words would be in the future."
Wynn credited his Japanese business partner, Kazuo Okada, with providing the final push in turning the vision of Le Reve into a chance at reality.
"These kinds of ideas require enormous capital and they require the belief and faith by a group of people who can see it through," Wynn said. "People like myself are part of a team like that, but I must make the point very clear that no one person could ever get to do these kinds of things alone. I was blessed this time because I was re-introduced to a man who I had met before because I did business with him buying slot machines."
Wynn said Okada, who attended the event with an interpreter and did not make a presentation, has been a player in Las Vegas real estate, having sold property to MGM Grand Inc. where the New York-New York hotel-casino stands. Wynn said Le Reve went from concept to reality when Okada, who heads gaming equipment manufacturer Aruze Corp., entered the picture.
"When that happened, more than any other single moment of this project, it started to really become a reality because when Mr. Okada joined me, we had the muscle at the very beginning, the financial strength to undertake a project of this overwhelming ambition," Wynn said.
Wynn also paid tribute to some of the historic figures that preceded him at the Desert Inn -- Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Sam Tucker and Howard Hughes.
"I'm sure they're all hovering in the neighborhood," Wynn said. "I hope you guys are happy. We're going to go to a new phase.
"If you're really thrilled," he joked, "send me a message and tell me where you buried the money."
Wynn acquired the Desert Inn shortly after the historic property observed its golden anniversary in 2000. He had just engineered the sale of Mirage Resorts Inc. to MGM Grand Inc. for $6.4 billion and bought the Desert Inn for his wife as a birthday present.
"A lot of people asked me, 'What does it feel like getting the Desert Inn for a gift?' " Elaine Wynn told guests.
"I said it's kind of like getting a Black & Decker drill. You know that it's very special, but you're not sure how to use it. And I knew deep down inside that Steve really wanted to play with it anyway."
Among the guests attending the opening were Clark County Commissioners Myrna Williams and Yvonne Atkinson Gates and former Gov. Bob Miller, a member of the Le Reve parent company's board of directors. Also present Thursday was Wynn's mother, Zelma Wynn, who a year ago pressed the ceremonial button to implode a portion of the Desert Inn that was removed for construction of Le Reve.
Le Reve will be across the street from the Fashion Show mall, which had its own flurry of activity Thursday as developers made last-second preparations for today's opening of a $1 billion, 1 million-square-foot expansion. Wynn's hotel will share a pedestrian bridge and a traffic light interchange with the mall at one of its primary entrances.
Rossi Ralenkotter, vice president of marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said Le Reve's groundbreaking was significant because new megaresorts become must-see attractions for tourists and Wynn's other properties have accomplished that in the past.
"It generates a tremendous amount of publicity all over the world," Ralenkotter said. "People from all over will want to see the next attraction to be built in Las Vegas."
Ralenkotter said LVCVA material about Las Vegas distributed worldwide would now include Le Reve and its anticipated opening date.
But more important to Wynn is that the world is again looking at Las Vegas as a place of opportunity.
"The most sophisticated institutions in the world have invested serious money in the future of Nevada, creating jobs, strengthening our tax base and, in a way, underwriting the future of the state of Nevada," Wynn said. "I look upon Le Reve the way I did Mirage in those days, as a vote of confidence for Nevada, the greatest place to be in business.
"The best is yet to come. We're going to have a lot of fun here."
archive
