Inside Gaming: Wynn May Have Answer to Project CityCenter

Wynn Resorts Ltd. is likely headed toward developing a master-planned urban village on the 135 acres adjacent to its newly opened Wynn Las Vegas, a recent Wall Street report said. No official announcement has been made and Wynn Resorts did not confirm the report. However, banking sources close to the company said the project is likely to resemble MGM Mirage's recently announced Project CityCenter south of Bellagio. It also fits with developer Steve Wynn's original plan to build six towers with 3,000 rooms each. The report said as more developments are announced, the concept of self-contained urban villages is likely to gain traction in Las Vegas.

Despite all the hype over the Strip, casino bosses and analysts are skeptical that 30,000 hotel rooms really will come online by 2010. Least likely to be completed are the long-promised megaresort at Phil Ruffin's New Frontier (3,000 hotel rooms), the much-speculated redevelopment of the Tropicana (4,000 hotel rooms) and the hotel component of Turnberry Place (1,000 hotel rooms), analysts say.

Gaming industry executives, at least, say the bigger problem is that too many bad deals are getting done. There's never been more money available for casino developments and, as a result, some hopeless projects will never get off the drawing boards, they say. It's usually two men in a rowboat who founder, one said, but look at the Aladdin. Neither the developer nor the money men understood the market, and the result was that the London Clubs built a white elephant. Planet Hollywood's Robert Earl is still trying to figure out what to do with it, nine months after buying the place.

Even though the media worldwide seem to take much glee in the opening-month difficulties at Wynn Las Vegas, including the resort's postponing the start of a second "Le Reve" show, developer Steve Wynn seems to be taking it all in stride. He should be. Wynn's been through it five times before (counting the Golden Nuggets here and in Atlantic City) and told us the day before the resort's opening that it would take at least 90 days to work out all the kinks.

While development is hot, hot, hot at the north end of the Strip, scuttlebutt now is that former Mandalay Resort Group President Glenn Schaeffer will not really be running the day-to-day development of the new Turnberry hotel-condominium project or the renovation of the legendary Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, Fla. Instead, he's going to be responsible for making each of the developments hip and cool. That's what he's credited with doing for Mandalay Bay and The Hotel, and that's what insiders say is his real fort .

Gaming Wire Editor Rod Smith can be reached by e-mail at rsmith@reviewjournal. com or by fax at 387-5243.

Copyright GamingWire. All rights reserved.