Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
StumbleExecutive is third to leave Wynn Resorts in 2 weeks
Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2010 | 6:35 p.m.
Wynn Las Vegas has parted ways with another high-level nightclub executive, the company said today.
Encore Beach Club and Surrender nightclub managing partner Bob Mancari is no longer with the company, Jennifer Dunne, a spokeswoman for Wynn Resorts, said Wednesday. Dunne said the company had no further comment on the departure. Mancari is the third executive to leave Wynn in less than two weeks.
Mancari was operating Encore Beach Club and Surrender with Sean Christie, who also operates Blush Nightclub and Society Café. The $67 million pool-nightclub complex opened in May 2010.
The announcement comes a week after the company said it had “separated” from nightclub manager Cy Waits as managing partner of the Tryst Nightclub at Wynn and XS The Nightclub at Encore.
Waits was arrested Aug. 27 on suspicion of misdemeanor driving under the influence after police smelled marijuana coming from his vehicle. He was arrested with girlfriend Paris Hilton, who was arrested on a felony cocaine possession charge.
On the morning of Aug. 27, prior to the arrests, Wynn Resorts announced it had ended its partnership with nightlife entrepreneur Victor Drai. Drai owned a third of XS and Tryst nightclubs in Wynn and Encore, both of which he helped to design and develop.
Discussion: 3 comments so far…
Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy. Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their Las Vegas Sun account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.
Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.
Post a comment
Most Popular
- Viewed
- Discussed
- E-mailed
- Coolican: Henderson officials out of loop on police brutality case, raising red flags
- Lumberjacks — ‘Where the Big Boys Eat’ — hiring for North Las Vegas location
- Berkley draws stark contrasts with Heller over immigration
- Howard Miller, prominent lawyer and ‘true Las Vegas native,’ dies at 68
- Short memories may serve president
- Two dead after accident in downtown Las Vegas
- Instant Analysis: Debating whether UNLV should continue series with San Diego State
- Superstar Whitney Houston dies at 48
- Police looking for man in white Ford Explorer
- Saying ‘No mas’ to government
Blogs
The Kats Report
Live color from the scene at Thomas & Mack Center: We have a wire job! Rebels win, and Louie Armstrong sings!
South Point owner Michael Gaughan's take on 'Vegas Stripped': 'I'll give it an 8' (4 Comments)
Author relishes writing the life story of ‘larger-than-life’ Oscar Goodman (3 Comments)
Elsewhere
Landowner: All roads could lead to Uxbridge casino
Revel reveals smoke-free casino opening
Cirque du Soleil show in Sands China casino to close this month
Meet the woman behind Sheldon Adelson
The Sun
Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
Mr. Wynn must be divesting himself of people and situations that are not working for him.
With that kind of Wynn dough, it's not hard to do, just cut the checks and move on.
Power is a wonderful thing, if you have it.
He's getting rid of dead weight as he should....
His sandbox, his rules. Don't like them, build your own sandbox. It is the American way (shhh, don't tell the Teamsters).
We would need a dozen buses to get rid of the bad executives in this town. I volunteer to drive.
A different company runs Blush and Encore...I wonder if Steve Wynn is trying to consolidate power and bring in somebody to run ALL 4 nightclubs. I think this may be his next move.
Bob Mancari was a casino host and was with Light Group before joining the Wynn. I hope he can still find a good job here. I am wondering what happened.
You don't eff with Steve Wynn. It's his way or the highway. The only reason Marc Schorr is still there is because he's Wynn's lap dog. Wynn tells him what to do and he walks through those resorts pulling on his tie, he breathes fire. Wynn is the nice guy, Schorr is his heavy.
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Wynn overbuilt just like everybody else here in Vegas, and now his properties are circling the drain too. The Mirage, and then the Bellagio, were two masterstrokes. But he was "juiced in" and handed a charmed life by the "boys" some 40+ years ago. These days, he's part of the problem, not the solution. Time for the Steve Wynn's of this town to step aside so Vegas can get on with developing a real economy.
Close down all of the juvenile night/day/pool clubs and put the focus back where it belongs..GAMBLING!!!
DTJ --Just flawed wishful thinking by a Wynn hater.
Duh-you forgot about Asia where the economy is much better.
logic_should_rule,
Not a hater, I give the man credit when it's due. But the facts are the facts and you need to study up on them. Wynn was handed his gig here in town by the boys who ran the show. He took it and ran with it, and for a good while made great hay -- everybody benefited. But he got left at the curb by MGM-Mirage, completely mistimed and misjudged the market with his Wynn Resorts on the Strip, and then tried to jump on the Asian gaming bandwagon, along with every other Tom, Dick and Harry. The Chinese government has recently moved to restrict gaming, making a lot of those rosy predictions for profits from Asia replacing the sinking fortunes for back home, look shaky. But in any event, WHO CARES? My point was about how Wynn, regarding Las Vegas' economy and future, is yesterday's news. Like much of corporate America, Wynn is setting sail for Asia and is no longer a contributor to our economy (a little hyperbolic on my part perhaps, but not really). If a company can't cut the mustard back here in the good ol' USA, then it's not doing us diddly squat. So, I repeat my main point from above: "Time for the Steve Wynn's of this town to step aside so Vegas can get on with DEVELOPING A REAL ECONOMY."
DTJ: Your comment is the smartest one I have read in a long time.
How many whales do they think are out there? How much money do they think the gamblers in the world have. Eventually it will end and it has.
Vegas has so much potential for other industries but the only thing on anyone's mind is an easy buck.
Well, if the naysayers here were little more than Monday morning quarterbacks they would have made fortunes shorting the gaming stocks. My, isn't 20/20 hindsight?
Did you know some of the monkeys that were in managemet for Steve Wynn are now managing the Eureka Casino in Mesquite, Nevada. That right, some of the fail managers are now working for Greg Lee and family managing the Eureka Casino in Mesquite, Nevada. Old dogs never die they just come to Mesquite, Nevada and work for Greg Lee.
New Nightclub in town at slots o fun:
Name: Waits/Drai
15x-32x mark-up on cocktails
But 1 free $1.00 slot ticket with every $360.00 admission
ALL casino jobs, exec or peon, are 'temporary' in nature; Nevada is an 'at will' state and nobody takes advantage of that employer benefit like the casino industry.
Unfortunately, Nevada comes in dead last for most of the attributes major corporations look for, including education and health care. I just don't see HP, Microsoft, Oracle or similar corporations relocating to a state where illiteracy is a badge of honor and employees cannot get decent heatlhcare, no matter how generous the company's benefit plan might be.
Add a crumbling or inadequate infrastructure and a crime rate equaling LA or Oakland, and you have the icing on the 'no way' cake.
All Wynn's displaced managers will have great jobs in a month, it's the nature of the business.
As for Vegas, it still might survive, since we can't afford to have the fat lady come out and sing.
And it ain't over 'till she does.
italiangal,
Thank you.
History will smile on Steve Wynn, and rightly so. But he and his gameplan are from the previous era, and the Vegas Valley needs a new one.
Vegasm,
I don't disagree with a lot of the shortcoming you enumerate, but there's no time like the present for us to roll up our sleeves and start making things better. Just looking around, I can see that some of the riff raff who dragged down the culture and collective IQ of the valley, are packing up and leaving. There are still far too many under-qualified people around who wouldn't be capable of supporting a hi-tech workforce base. But a transition is actually already underway. One example is the Millennium Scholarship: I've recently met several bright young local kids who were accepted to top-tier schools elsewhere in the country, but are staying here to take advantage of the scholarship. Sure, some of them will move on after graduating. But some can be lured to stay. It's a start. Traditonally, So. Nevada's best young minds would automatically leave. Also, the stars are in alignment for the alternative energy industries to start setting up shop. American society is finally paying attention, the federal government is supplying a lot of the funding, and Nevada has the representation in Washington (as long as we don't blow a good thing!).
But frankly speaking, I'll even take less glamorous, less high-wage paying jobs if the companies will just come and set up shop. Northern Nevada has Amazon.com and other large warehouse/distribution facilities. So. Nevada has an equally plum location for such businesses. Real estate has never been cheaper, here. And prospective employers could have their pick of the lot with prospective new-hires. It would be a fresh start for our valley and I'd take it! Slowly, the culture and the workforce would change. The absolutely worst thing we could do, however, would be to perpetuate the "temporary" mentality/culture that we have now, by trying to cling to the casino/construction deadend that got us into this mess in the first place.
Vegas can always keep it's "Vegas" image, and have gaming as one part of the equation. But we need to strive to be so much more, if we want to continue to put food on our tables. (End of sermon.)
DTJ:
I don't disagree with most of what you have said, but would like to point out that without continued renewal of the entertainment and resort properties on the Strip, we would see the jewel of Las Vegas slowly headed towards being a Downtown Las Vegas or even an Atlantic City within the next decade. Still, I agree that that Wynn, Adelson, and MGM International over extended themselves. Look at the Palms original casino: Build cost? $180 Million. They don't have to drop $2 - 8 Billion to make something unique, can be done much cheaper.
Metropony,
And I, in turn, agree with you. "The Strip" is part of the entertainment biz, so it has to remain fresh to keep people coming. But two caveats: 1) As we have concurred, the cramming of everyone into the penthouse market was overdone, with no regard to what the market could bear. The discretionary dollars out there to spent in Vegas are only so many (especially now that gaming is available in more and more regional and local casinos, both in the U.S., and abroad). 2)Our community needs to mature anyway, and not be entirely dependent upon the fortunes of the gaming sector. I've argued before on this forum that gaming should only be one leg supporting our table. Let gaming do it's thing (responsibly). But far beyond gaming, let's diversify our economy.
Do you think that Mr. Wynn ran everyone through "pee in the bottle" drug tests and maybe "pull the hair by it's roots" drug tests?
After what happened on the strip, it may be in partners' and employees' contracts that he can drug test whenever he wants and can dismiss if you are using an illegal drug.
Just a thought.
Seems to me like Mr. Mancari has decided to go with Victor Drai as he revamps the former Barbary Coast. I think Cy Waits will wind up there as well. I don't think everyone who leaves Wynn has to be fired. People can leave for better opportunities.
I knew this was coming. I said it before when he got rid of Cy. There is more to come from him. I hope he has realized that Las Vegas is his home and not Macau. And maybe he will think about us in alittle better condition. Expect the other big kahunas to start doing the same thing. Or they have and we are not hearing about it. I also pray they all get some of the bean counters gone. Have a balancing act with people management skills. Bring back some local entertainment. We need some balance in Vegas in more ways then even this.
DTJ,
I agree with you that we need more than gaming to keep us afloat. This is not just a small gaming town anymore, we have grown to a full sized city and need to have diversity in our economic future to survive. I come from Elkhart In and have been here for 25+ years, my hometown was recently on MSNBC, they have THE ELKHART PROJECT, telling about the economy and how it affected this area that put all of their economy on the backs of RV manufacturers. Not much different from us actually, tourist markets. Unless we want to become THE LAS VEGAS PROJECT, we need to do something.
If a more educated work force is the answer we will have to find a way to bring in people from the outside or keep UNLV students here because the way our CCSD is going we are not raising the bar ourselves. It might not be the fault of our teachers that they cannot teach, they have a job to do and have to do what they are told just like most of us, but somewhere, somehow someone has to step in and realize preparing students for tests and passing students that don't make the grade, isn't teaching anyone anything.
What a clever business man, Mr. Wynn is.
We all know how crazy some employees in the office can get, whenever the boss announces to not being available or not being in the house on a certain day, during a certain week, at a certain point of time.
Way to go and to spot the fat cats, Mr. Wynn!
If I were to clean up a company, I would tell everybody, that I would be spending most of my time at some distant place, like a different continent. Then all the brain-dead fat cat morons would even be too silly to get the message.
Agreed. This economy needs good tech skills and tech jobs as well as other types. That's LV future. But, for the now and the near future, we need the casinos and they need to smarten up and come home. They need to think of ways to get people here even if they don't gamble like they did. They will always make money. They need to do some of the old ways like the 50's. I have stated to not only get some people management and service skills to customers but also to us, too. It would be also nice for some promotions and entertainment like the old days. In the future the Stardust and Riviera could do the 50's where the customers have to dress for dinner and shows like the old days. Have participation. And also have a museums like the mob one that Goodman has going but also entertainment. Liberace museum is going. Take that history and others, not just the Rat Pack and Elvis, and put it in a big place somewhere and charge some money. It will be bigger that what Adelson and Wynn had and make more money and its VEGAS. I wish Vegas history would be revised and restored.
vegasm, as a business owner who recently relocated from southern california, i can tell you nevada has exactly what we are looking for.
as far as dead last in health care and education, those distinguished honors go to california. it's not getting any better there since it is a welfare state and has no plan to stop illegal immigrants from pouring in to take advantage of the taxpayer-paid freebies.
I'd love to take on the job,and i can pass a piss test.
SW cant fire Mark Schorr. He doesnt do anything to be fired from!! But it would be a happy day to see that miserable ol' geezer go! Ever see him smile?
We need Vegas to be a city with two heads, on with cheap land, good schools and a high tech workforce, funded by the gaming and entertainment boys... The other is the waste of space called the resort corridor, in the resort corridor it should just be a heavily taxed free for all, hookers, gambling, drugs what ever you want we got it, hell we already have the SS to protect us, Metro, they shoot first and ask questions later. Bring the mob back to run it and if vegas visitors get out of line let Ahern rent the mob a tractor and the BLM give um some land for holes in the desert.
If people could come here get a hooker, free booze, gamble, smoke weed and do blow and X all for a price of say 5K a weekend paid up front to a tour company you would have to book 5 years in advance.
cch I am glad your business is doing so well. I do want to tell you that Nevada has about a 25% Espanic population and there is some illegals in that population and there maybe other ethnics and whites that are here illegally too. We are not without this trouble as well. Some have been here for years and are lawbidding citizens who got into the system. Pay taxes on the paycheck and do not file to get back money on income tax. Health care here is more than just an illegal problem. Many Americans are going without medicine and suffering through because of no heath care and cannot afford it. I am one of these Americans who is white and 57 and a woman. If I get sick or have an accident, I better be dead because I will be homeless. And I am not getting any help from any agency and I am unemployed.
gbigs: tell that to the developer that is putting 238 new homes in blue diamond right now.
2. there is no inventory here. We do not have manufacturing jobs. They are producting in other states. GM just had its best year since 2005.
3. With 8 months of privite sector jobs going up, spending is too. Just not here in Vegas.
4. tell that to the speculators that are buying the foreclosures now and in court fighting the back HOA dues.
If you believe this will be a ghost town, why haven't you left with the 2% that already has? tell that to the afternoon traffic too.
China will have casinos, but not to the point of Las Vegas. The average Chinese worker makes about a $2 per day. It is very hard to live on $2 per day let alone gamble.
I think Wynn knew that Cy Waits was smoking weed often before work .
When he wanted to fire him, because of the dissolution of his relationship with Victor Drai(Cy's Uncle), the Weed smoking was his excuse for firing him.
This is all conjecture on my part, and maybe officer Friendly just got lucky, and pulled over the one Escalade that was wafting weed smoke(ala Cheech and Chong), and was driven by Cy Waits.
So, Steve dropped a dime on him, and Paris Hilton was an innocent coke-sniffing by-stander.
It just doesn't pass the smell test, even if it is the skunkiest!
environprotector continues his hysterical wishes for the past to become the present. News Flash It Is Not Happening. In your bring back gambling dreams, do you also believe gaming will disappear from the countless alternatives across the country? Do you see the age of the computer going "poof." Do you bring back the machines that accept and kick out pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters? Are you all for more buffets? Are Frank and Elvis going to sign new 3 year deals... in between their numerous tours and movie shoots? Your genius is revolutionary... I'm not sure why your ideas don't materialize. Oh, I know why... because you live in the Stone Age sir. Keep these ideas and wishes where they belong and ultimately will stay - in your slumber hours. Have fun there - it won't cost you anything.
Hmmmmm, I find all this talk of narcotics and Mr. Wynn, quite interesting, and all I will say about THAT is, "People in glass houses...."
There's a long history of people doubting and underestimating Steve Wynn. He ALWAYS proves them wrong. He'll do it again... Sorry haters, he's the king of Vegas...
well, dave202, I am not a hater, just an eye witness on several occasions to the fact that Mr. W. has NO BUSINESS condemning illicit drug use...I'm just sayin'...
If I want to go gambling, I go to Las Vegas. If I need the party scene, I go to Ibizza. If I need other kind of "action", I can go to Thailand, if you know what I am talking about....
Las Vegas with the night club scene is a little bit of a joke. It rises the question whether they're still interested in making money on gaming or not any longer. From the taxation point of view, gaming would be a greater business than dining and party. But who knows, perhaps they know how to turn night club revenues into "gaming revenues".
From Switzerland
Sounds like Boris enjoys his time with the kiddies...