WYNN LAS VEGAS

Wynn Las Vegas, built at a cost of US$2.7 billion, is a casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada. The resort is named after casino developer Steve Wynn and is the flagship property of Wynn Resorts Limited.

Wynn Las Vegas is one of the tallest buildings in Las Vegas, towering 50 stories over the Strip. It is located at Las Vegas Boulevard South and Sands Avenue, across from the Fashion Show Mall.

The 2,716 rooms range in size from 620 square feet (58 m²) to the villas at 7,000 square feet (650 m²) with a 111,000 ft² (10,200 m²) casino. A convention center with 223,000 ft² (20,700 m²) of space is also available.


HISTORY OF WYNN LAS VEGAS

The site was assembled by buying the Desert Inn Hotel and Golf course for most of the land. The remainder was acquired by purchasing private residences that were generally located along Paradise Avenue. While some owners sold early on, others held out. This resulted in numerous legal actions between the various parties. In the end, the site acquired totaled 215 acres (870,000 m²).

Wynn Las Vegas LLC contracted with Marnell Corrao Associates on June 4, 2002 to design and build the resort. The original name for the project was "Le Rêve" but was changed to "Wynn Las Vegas" well before the project was complete. The original name lives on in the stage production.

The historic Desert Inn Golf Course was rebuilt while the hotel was being constructed. The new course, the only one on the Las Vegas Strip, was designed by Steve Wynn and Tom Fazio, who previously worked together on the Shadow Creek Golf Club, also in Las Vegas. Called the "Wynn Golf and Country Club", use of the course is restricted to hotel guests at a cost of $500 per round.

The initial commercial for the hotel aired in some local spots during the 2005 Super Bowl. The commercial stands out in that Wynn stood atop the edge of his tall building (with a helicopter a few feet away). Wynn Las Vegas, designed by Jon Jerde, opened on April 28, 2005, Wynn's wife's birthday, the 55th Anniversary of the opening of the original Desert Inn, and the day Steve Wynn purchased the site five years ago.


ATTRACTIONS OF WYNN LAS VEGAS

In a departure from the previous trend of providing free sidewalk attractions to draw in customers, Wynn Las Vegas is constructed so that visitors must enter the site to view the free attractions. The main feature is large, flat waterfall behind a mountain, running into a small 3 acre (12,000 m²) lake, both of which have images displayed on them to produce a unique show on the hour, every hour, starting in the afternoon. The show is called, the Lake of Dreams.

The resort has on display much of Wynn's considerable art collection, which has been displayed at the Bellagio. The collection, which focuses primarily on 19th and 20th-century works by European and American artists, includes masterpieces by Édouard Manet, Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Paul Gauguin, among others. The centerpiece of the collection is Le Rêve, the Pablo Picasso portrait that was the working name of the resort project. Wynn reportedly purchased the painting for $42 million, one of the highest prices ever paid for a Picasso.

The collection was on display at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno while the Wynn Las Vegas was being constructed and was installed in the resort shortly before it was opened. The gallery closed shortly after the new year for the resort, due to low sales. The space will be used for additional retail space, mostly an expansion of the retail area for Wynn, called, Wynn Esplanade. The artwork for the former gallery are now scattered around the resort, with the centerpiece artwork, Le Rêve, now hanging in the main registeration hotel lobby.

The property features 26 retail outlets in 76,000 square feet (7,000 m²) of space, an art gallery, and two wedding chapels. There are also 18 restaurants and bars. Among the retail outlets is a Ferrari-Maserati dealership, amusingly located next to the main automobile valet so that customers can browse the exotic cars while they wait to retrieve their own cars.

Nightclubs are an important part of the resort, as are theaters housing several production shows. The original nightclub on the property, Le Bete, was temporarily closed during a redesign to improve performance. Le Bete reopened as Tryst in 2006, with a popular weekly event called Retro on Sunday nights. There is also a ultra-lounge on the property called Lure.

The first production show, entitled Le Rêve, is set in a 1 million gallon water-oriented theatre where no seat is more than 40 feet (12 m) from the stage. This production, was created by Franco Dragone and is similar to the shows produced by Cirque du Soleil.

The second production show is Avenue Q, a puppet and people musical which enjoyed considerable success on Broadway. It debuted on September 8, 2005 in the 1,200 seat Broadway Theatre, the show will close on May 28, 2006.

Following the closing of the show will be a renovation on the theatre to make way for the Las Vegas production of Spamalot, a Tony Award-winning comedic musical based on the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, scheduled to open in 2007.


INSPIRATION AND VISION

Wynn purchased the Desert Inn hotel and casino to obtain property for his future dreams. The Desert Inn was imploded to make room for his new hotel project. Along the way, Wynn Resorts Limited was formed and continued development with Wynn being the controlling stock holder.

Wynn has stated that the major shift with this new resort is the concept of designing from the "inside out." In contrast to his previous hotels Bellagio, The Mirage, and Treasure Island there is no Las Vegas Strip attraction to draw in the gawkers. Instead, visitors must venture inside to see what the hotel is all about. Wynn has said that "there is no franchise in a casual observer, there is a franchise in a guest."


FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

On April 28, 2006, the resort celebrated its one year anniversary with the ground breaking of a second hotel tower. To be known as Encore, the tower will be a $1.74 billion, 2,054 room hotel project adjacent to the existing resort, on the remaining frontage of Las Vegas Blvd. Originally envisioned as an expansion of Wynn Las Vegas, Encore will be a full-scale resort and is set to open in December, 2008.

LAS VEGAS TOURS AND ACTIVITIES

LAS VEGAS HOTELS & ACCOMMODATION