Wynn Magazine - Las Vegas
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/615999
32 Wynn photography by Keystone-France/gamma-Keystone via getty images (DisneylanD); chucK Fishman/WooDFin camp/the liFe images collection/getty images (sinatra) from left: Steve Wynn and Frank Sinatra at the Golden Nugget, circa 1984; Disneyland, 1960. an institution by 1960, as did the Fontainebleau. And then I get a chance to come to Las Vegas, which seems to me the perfect way to combine the glamour of the movies and the Fontainebleau with the security of the bank. The father of one of my fraternity brothers from Penn was the chairman of Caesars, so there I am at Caesars on opening night in 1966, and I'm 24 years old. And Las Vegas feels like the promised land." Years before Wynn would build the Mirage, with its 3,000 rooms and spewing volcano, capitalizing on the "fantasy factor" that the Strip was ready for in 1989, and the $1.6 billion Bellagio, which blew Las Vegas's collective mind in 1998, he learned another important lesson about luxury—one having nothing to do with Roman chariots, summer furs, or pyrotechnics. It was 1973, Wynn had been elected chairman and president of the Golden Nugget, and he was going to visit the Nevada Gaming Commission in Carson City for the fnal hearing on his license. "In those days, you had to be found suitable," he explains. "I rented a car at the Reno airport and made a reservation at the Harrah's hotel on Virginia Street, a downtown hotel in Reno that's bare-bones. And when I pulled up my rental car to the curb, it felt like pulling up to the Plaza. This young kid comes and says, 'Welcome to Harrah's. Are you just visiting or are you check- ing into the hotel, may I ask?' And he gave me his card with an extension and had my bags sent directly up and said, 'Don't you worry about a thing, Mr. Wynn. If you call that number, we'll have your car waiting.' And I'm thinking, Whoa. He walks me over to this cheap glass door and welcomes me again to Harrah's. I go up the escalator, and there's a young woman behind a wooden front desk, and she gives me a greeting that's just as nice as the one I got downstairs. "Now at this point she looks down—they didn't have computers in those days; they had registra- tion cards—and she sees the reservation request and it's in red, which means complimentary, and the authorizer is Rome Andreotti, the guy who ran the casino. And I'm in the Presidential Suite. She says, 'Oh my goodness, Mr. Wynn, you're in the Presidential Suite. Are you gonna love this room—it's the nicest one in the hotel! Mr. Andreotti has taken very good care of you! We're delighted to have you. Are you just staying the one night?' 'Yeah, I'm going to Gaming Control in the morning.' 'Well, good luck, Mr. Wynn, and again, if there's anything you need, just pick up the phone—there's a butler service in your suite. Your bag will be upstairs.' I hadn't even made it to the room yet, and okay, it was a lobby with a nice car- pet, but I'm dazzled. And I make up my mind that that's what I want with my employees. What the hell were they feeding these guys? How did they get that warmth? You know, 40 some odd years later and I can still see her face and hear that valet door kid. Now there's luxury." (Wynn tracked down the Harrah's human resources consultant and hired him right away at the Golden Nugget.) Somewhere between the Fontainebleau's cabana 364 and Carson City, Steve Wynn found his hospitality core. "I was infuenced by a whole bunch of forces that the men before me could not have experienced the way I did," he says. "Disney played no role to Novack. Bill Harrah didn't know from the Fontainebleau and he didn't know from Disney. Sarno never gave a damn about Reno because it was Squaresville." But Wynn saw them all in their heyday, "and I had that Harrah's experience tattooed on me forever. And that gave me a richer experience. I was going to combine all the magic I'd seen with the service of Harrah's." And he's been doing it ever since. n STEVE WYNN