Word: wynne
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Wall Street, suddenly, loves the plan. When Wynn Resorts went public in 2002, demand for shares was so soft that Wynn put up $150 million for the $13-a-share stock. Since then the stock has soared, closing at $53 last Friday. Much of that price is high expectation about his new Macau property, due in 2006, which is part of an influx of American casinos setting up shop there...
...some people, building a $2.7 billion hotel--with plans for a $1.4 billion one next door--would be gambling, but Wynn doesn't see it that way. He agreed to take his new company public only after Wynn Resorts president Ron Kramer argued that the influx of cash would remove pressure to open the new casinos quickly or generate immediate profits. "Steve is a very conservative guy. He is not a gambler in any sense of the word," says Kramer. "He said, 'I want to build a company that will outlast me.' That's a very different point of view...
...Oddly, Wynn isn't very interested in gambling. His bingo-parlor-owner father, to whom Steve was reportedly close, was a compulsive gambler. On the eve of his father's cancer surgery, as an English major at the University of Pennsylvania, Steve sat at his father's bed, tallying more than $200,000 in the elder Wynn's outstanding debt. Steve made his first major foray into Vegas in 1972, buying an interest in the Golden Nugget, a seedy downtown casino. He overhauled the place, then built a new Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, N.J. (with financing from junk bonds...
...Nowadays Wynn hopes to shrink gambling to less than 45% of the overall take at his hotels; he says he would remove it from his tranquil new oasis entirely if he could. "I do need the cash flow from the casino to justify the things I do," says Wynn. "I wouldn't want to dumb down my hotel--not at this point in my life. How many guys get to try to build the best hotel in the world...
...Wynn believes the best Vegas hotel will cater to what people really crave: calmness. He figures that now that he has helped defang gambling and strippers to the point where they're in every town and on many websites, the real luxury is doing swankier versions of those things in a relaxing environment. Instead of squeezing in an hour to bet online while your kids are yelling, you get to play blackjack by the pool and stare at a waterfall while dancing at 3 a.m. The Mister Rogers of Vegas is hoping you'll want to take off your sweater...