Word: wynn
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...view from the floor-to-ceiling windows in our room at the new Wynn Encore provides a distressingly clear picture of what's going on in Las Vegas these days. To the south, there's a casino project that has ground to a halt, half built, its steel skeleton an outline of a multibillion-dollar dream gone hungry. Across the street, there's a Modernist chapel, a lonely vigil of virtue on the Strip - people seek salvation elsewhere in this town. Look west toward the mountains and you can trace the Vegas real estate developers' dash toward the horizon with...
...Encore, which opened officially in January, stands like a luxurious monument of defiance to the recession. It is not; it cannot. Wynn Resorts boss Steve Wynn has cut room rates to as little as $169 a night - the original projected rates were something on the order of $350 - but he won't cut service. That act of defiance means the Encore is a pretty astonishing value for any visitors in the mood to treat themselves to a Las Vegas fling in these tough times. The $2 billion, 2,034-room project adjoins the Wynn - the hotels are connected...
...ground level, the Encore, like its older sibling, is still all business, though Wynn had his decorator, Roger P. Thomas, nod to the Las Vegas of the past. The casino floor is dominated by a color that the company says used to be standard in casinos in the bad old good old days - just call it whorehouse red. But it works here, with the brilliant red chandeliers, the whole effect muted a bit by judicious use of off-white fabric. The other delicate touches are cast, oddly enough, by natural light streaming in from either end of the casino floor...
...Wynn being who he is, the Encore is not without artifice. It's still a showpiece. The Encore has five restaurants, including Switch, which features a contemporary surf-and-turf menu but whose selling point is that its walls automatically change out like set decorations to give the room an entirely different look every so often. Impressive, if pointless. There's a steak place called Botero that displays works by the Colombian artist and a more modest joint called Café Society. We dined at Wynn's signature restaurant, Sinatra, named for ole you-know-who, a Wynn...
...Even before Wynn and others moved to Macau, the former Portuguese colony and den of iniquity that is now part of the People's Republic of Gambling, Las Vegas was catering to its Asian clientele. The Encore is no exception. The elevator panel shows the floors climbing to 63, but floors numbered from 40 to 49 are missing, since the pronunciation for the number four in Cantonese and Mandarin is too close to the word for death. Very bad chi. On the life-fulfilling side, the Encore has a 60,000-sq.-ft. spa and gym that caters...