Word: wynn
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...this crowded field, Wynn stands out not because he owns the nation's biggest casino company (Caesars is, with revenues last year of $928.5 million in contrast to $833 million for Wynn's Mirage Resorts Inc.) or because he is the first to think of inserting family fun into betting parlors (Circus Circus Enterprises Inc. did in the mid-'70s, with acrobats and clowns performing above the casino floor). But he is the first to apply to gambling the Disney formula for class-crossing, universal family leisure: cleanliness, measured frivolity and a sense of architectural detail. In the right environment...
...Wynn philosophy seems to work. His three-year-old, $730 million casino in Las Vegas, the Mirage, is the biggest moneymaker on the Strip, at least in part because patrons come to see the man-made volcano out front that erupts at night every 15 minutes, the sharks swimming behind the registration desk, the white tigers lounging below Roman columns in their glass cage and the dolphins in the seaquarium. His new Treasure Island casino, to open in October, will re-create at hourly intervals a cannon fight between two battleships and offer a permanent home to the elegant Cirque...
...Wynn's ambitions command attention because he has scored one success after another, even if his first Las Vegas venture was a flop. At 25, he took money he had made in his family's bingo business in Maryland and invested $45,000 to purchase a 3% interest in the Frontier Hotel, where he became the slot manager. But several stockholders of the hotel turned out to be stand-ins for Detroit mobsters, and Wynn was forced to sell early. He was never accused of being anything but an innocent in the affair, and he did get something invaluable...
Thomas first set up Wynn in a liquor distributorship and then arranged for him to buy a tiny parcel next to Caesars Palace that was owned by Howard Hughes. News of the sale to Wynn made front-page headlines because it was the first piece of Las Vegas property the reclusive Hughes had ever sold; what also got noticed was the price Caesars paid for the lot 11 months later to keep Wynn from building his own casino there ($2.25 million). Wynn walked away with a nice $766,000 profit. He used that money to accumulate more stock...
...Year's Eve look like it was closed for lunch." Wearing shorts, sandals and a Willie Nelson T shirt, he walked down the Boardwalk to the old Strand Motel; less than an hour later, he walked out having agreed to buy it for $8.5 million in cash. Wynn razed the Strand and built the 506-room Golden Nugget, which quickly exceeded by 50% the revenues it was projected to make based on its size...