Las Vegas is the town that defined the definition of redefining a city. When the recession of the 80's caught up to everyone else, Vegas called up it's markers and rebuilt the town. But it wasn't the town on a whole that decided at the same time to rebuild, it was the one and only Steve Wynn that decided on his own that what the city didn't need was more fifty cent shrimp cocktails…but rather a few more ten dollar shrimp cocktails.

When everyone else was competing for the Horseshoe's fifty cent drinkers, Steve Wynn knew that a few more six dollar drinks and twelve dollar shrimp cocktails might work with the right people, that those places could keep their fifty cent drinkers and shrimp cocktails in plastic cups.

When the Mirage was built and opened in 1989 with the borrowing of hundreds of millions of dollars from penny stock specialist Michael Milken, the only ones in this town that believed in this stupid idea was Steve and Michael.

The people at Caesar's Palace, the biggest moneymaker on the strip at the time, and the Desert Inn people who were considered the number two moneymakers, were ecstatic. Caesar's was eager to prove they were the only classy place left in town in that area and the classy Desert Inn owned the other end of the Strip with not much other competition in the high-end casino business.

The idea was when the Mirage failed, everyone else on the Strip and downtown that were trying to decide weather to spend money trying to refurbish their own casinos and compete with the likes of Caesar's and the D.I., would now opt to just stay put and keep their low-end competition ideas and stay out of the high-end casino business.

I can tell you Caesar's hired pollsters to go out to watch the crowds to see where they were spending their money, and they knew that although they had a lot of walk-through traffic, only certain types of people were stopping and spending money at the Palace and the others were just walking through, taking their pictures in front of the then-famous fountains so they could prove they were there, then going down to Slots-A-Fun and Circus Circus for their cheap food and drinks and they were pretty much ignoring Ballys and the Aladdin and the other casinos in the Flamingo/Strip corridor who also seemed to have their own built-in customers and weren't concerned about competition from the Mirage.

Even though Wynn announced the plans of the casino, including the lake and volcano and the enclosed greenhouse, it just sounded like wasted money and space to the old casino guys that always figured the combination for a successful casino was lots of slots, lots of lights, a few mafia looking types and cheap drinks.

So the Mirage opened and the rest is history. The other casinos were fighting over themselves to spend money and build new everything to try to keep up with the new property. It wouldn't be for another eleven years before the management at the other strip casinos would get a decent night's sleep…the day that Steve Wynn signed his name on the sales slip over to the MGM team.

This was a desperate move by MGM. Rather than swim against the competition, they either sank on their own, or sank the competition so their backstroking would look like swimming to everyone else. It was compared to Hertz selling all their old crappy cars and buying all new Cadillac's, then Avis comes by and buys out Hertz and all their Cadillac's, chops them up and makes twice as many Volkswagens and calls themselves the new #1.

The day Wynn turned in his keys to the men's room and caught the last limo out of town, the MGM declared themselves the new #1 in Las Vegas.

Flash-forward to today, Oct.23rd. And at 2am, the last standing tower at the old Desert Inn was imploded by Steve Wynn. Management at the other casinos heard the roar of the blast, and now they'll never sleep tight again. Although Wynn wasn't gone for very long, they figured by now with the downturn in the economy and a massive recession hitting this vacation spot, no one in their right mind would continue on a course to spend and spend. Building a new casino when everyone else is trying to figure out how to explain their fifty-cent size shrimp cocktails and drinks selling for six bucks to their stockholders who are crying about their stock being down fifty cents a share and nothing much is selling at any price.

So now they're talking about dropping prices and laying off workers and putting off any spending until sometime after the new World Trade Centers are re-built. Steve Wynn is going forth with his $1.5 billion dollar plans for the new casino on the old D.I. site. This is deja vu all over again. Wynn is at his best bucking the odds and succeeding while all others are scrambling to pay the electric and water bills.

Once again he's putting beauty and form before function, he's deciding where to put the gardens and pools and fountains before he's considering how many slot machines to order and how many blackjack tables to start building. And once again the other casino managers are talking about what size body bag to carry Wynn out of town in when they really should be measuring themselves.

In 1990, the year after the Mirage was paid off, one year sooner than expected, most of the management in the Flamingo/Strip corridor were in unemployment lines, replaced with younger guys that could think ahead. And their ahead thinking led them to think of places as exotic as the Excalibur and the Luxor and New York New York and the MGM. Yet when they were done and stood back and looked at what they had done, they all realized they forgot just one thing that Wynn didn't…CLASS.

To this day I still walk through the newer casinos and wonder how they could have failed to realize that Wynn started his plans with the idea that CLASS would come first then everything else would surely follow, including customers.

Now I walk through the MGM and see the same tired barn sized casino, the same one the Luxor and Excalibur and New York, and Bally's built. They never stopped and looked at what succeeded at the Mirage or even the latter Bellagio. Only Sheldon Addelson took the time and care with the Venetian to give the Mirage/Bellagio an even run for their money and customer base. The biggest failure, the Aladdin, is the worst of the offenders with their lackadaisical approach to new casino building. Thus the reason for the Aladdin going Chapter 11, is that they were the last one built so they had the time and money and experience of everything else that occurred on the Strip both positive and negative before them to decide how to build a successful casino.

They failed because people wanted another new property, another new idea, another new place to invent and explore. Unlike some others said that they should have changed the name to reflect a new idea, we know now that wouldn't have changed the interior, or the depressing feeling one gets when walking through places like the Aladdin and Bally's and Excalibur if they had changed their names also. I wish I could say it was just a reflection of the economic times that the Aladdin was built at the wrong time, that's what they said about the Mirage and the Bellagio too.

The finger pointers are pointing right now, they're saying the idea of building another high-end casino resort at such a depressed time in the economy is suicide. That it's not just a stupid idea, but coupled with the idea of building in the same spot the last casino failed, saying it's too far down the strip, too far away from the other successful properties… and unlike Wynn's other projects, is being built on the east side of the strip and out of the successful casino corridor.

The Desert Inn was a very classy casino/resort for years, but then even after a $60 million dollar refurbishment still couldn't make money. When looking at the other casinos in the area including the Frontier, Stardust, Circus Circus, Riviera, and Sahara, that didn't compare in class or distinction to the Desert Inn, aren't making money, how can another over-priced casino in that area make it?

Won't most people walking in that area just walk by the expensive joint, just look in, take a picture in front of the fountains to prove they were there, and keep walking? I guess to answer that you have to look at the Bellagio and Venetian. Here are over-priced, way too expensive casinos, that many people just walk through and look in the windows and keep walking to the cheaper places. But they found out that customer service would create it's own loyalty, and amongst the rich, loyalty equals quarterly results, service equals money, and cheap food and drinks don't have anything to do with business since people have the money to spend, they just don't like who they're spending it with.

When Wynn came along with the Mirage and announced the room prices and table limits and food prices they snickered, but when he announced that those prices didn't apply to his loyal customers, that customer service was first above anything else, and that his good customers were in a league of their own, the other management cringed as they saw the numbers climb steadily as their numbers slowly declined. While he was busy creating a loyal customer base, they were busy making customers carry their casino player's cards if they wanted a free room or buffet.

Now the Station casinos announced they were putting in penny (ONE CENT) slots in all their casinos. Palace Station, Boulder Station, Sunset Station, Texas, and Santa Fe. (I guess there's a big base of customers just walking around Las Vegas with piggy banks full of pennies just looking for a casino to spend them in.)

Sure enough, last week they put up a big sign at Sahara and the Strip "WE HAVE THE HOTTEST PENNY SLOTS IN TOWN" like wearing it like a cheap badge of honor. I'm sure to be followed by their proud sign "WE COMP PENNY PLAYERS" What the hell they're thinking. I don't know. Every casino that went to shit like dollar blackjack tables and dollar drinks and now penny slots, all get what they ask for, PENNY PLAYERS. (I feel sorry for the dealers that used to make decent money) But the problem is the stink can be smelled all up and down the Strip, a cross between the smell of copper pennies and urine. Just what Las Vegas needs right now, the fresh smell of shit on the Strip.

And so Wynn will build his new empire based on high classed customers with high classed service they haven't had since he gave up his parking spot at the Bellagio. He'll split the traffic coming into the Venetian and Mirage and with his combination of the right ideas and right management and take the rest of the high-end business one at a time from places like Paris and MGM who wouldn't know a comp if it crapped on their heads.

He'll revitalize the north Strip corridor like he did at Flamingo Rd./Strip corridor and the other casinos down there will have to scramble like all the other Strip resorts had to do just a few blocks down just a few years earlier, push a bunch of money into their joints to try to keep up, blow their places up and rebuild trying to compete, or just give up altogether, drop the prices of their now-too-expensive drinks and food and room prices, and revert to the Fremont St. idea of doing business. More lights, cheaper drinks, and start growing more of them popcorn shrimp in Lake Mead for those of you who enjoy your meals out of a plastic cup.

-Ken Pearlman