SLS will finally open a venue for live entertainment

Anyone who doesn't believe in second chances never worked in the casino industry.

Las Vegas has always kept contractors busy with its malleable entertainment scene, and the SLS Las Vegas fixes what now seems like a terrible mistake when it enters the live entertainment business next month.

If you don't remember, yes, you read that right. The former Sahara, home to Louis Prima, the epitome of golden-age Vegas, reopened in 2014 with three nightclubs but no place for concerts or traditional ticketed shows.

So much else went wrong with the rest of the SLS before part-owner Sam Nazarian sold his company's 10-percent stake last year, the entertainment strategy seemed almost like a footnote.

But now, one of the clubs is completing its conversion to a live music club, The Foundry, set to open Feb. 5 with Awolnation. The former LiFE Nightclub will be operated by the SLS but booked exclusively by behemoth concert promoter Live Nation.

Other early bookings include Lil Wayne on Feb. 6, X Ambassadors on March 26, Adam Lambert on April 1 and Boyce Avenue on April 23.

Matthew Minichino, the SLS's vice president of nightlife and entertainment, didn't come on board until March. So he's diplomatic when speaking of the original team and its decisions.

"In a perfect world, I do believe The Foundry would have been a great addition to the property at the opening of the hotel," he says.

Reality-TV addicts might have figured Minichino for one to have partaken of the nightclub-euphoria Kool-Aid. As the Hard Rock Hotel's director of nightlife, he got plenty of face time on truTV's "Rehab," centered around the hotel's notorious pool club.

So Minichino's view might be a surprise: "I always say that 85 percent of people who do come to Las Vegas on an annual basis don't want to frequent the nightclubs."

The live music club will "really give the property a true entertainment driver," he says. "It's just identifying what our nightlife offering is, but also trying to find a way to get additional bodies to the property, the bodies that aren't interested in the nightlife offerings."

One of his favorite days at the Hard Rock was the April 2009 opening of the second version of The Joint with Paul McCartney. "But meanwhile, I had Wyclef (Jean) at Rehab and an electronic music open-format offering at Vanity nightclub. You had three different types of clientele on the property and it was a record day for that property."

The Foundry's capacity will range from about 600 for a seated stand-up comedy show to about 1,800 for a standing-room, general-admission concert. That will keep it out of competition with 4,000-plus capacity rooms such as The Joint, Planet Hollywood's Axis or the Colosseum at Caesars Palace.

But the new venue is the same size as the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay, which also is booked by Live Nation. Both clubs will go head-on with the Brooklyn Bowl at The Linq, and the potential competition includes the smaller Hard Rock Live on the Strip and the larger Pearl at the Palms or Cosmopolitan's pool deck.

Kurt Melien, who heads Live Nation's Las Vegas office, doesn't see bidding wars for club-sized acts.

"Artists have more choices, which means they're more inclined to play Vegas. This is a room that's going to attract artists," Melien says. "Awolnation is not on tour right now, but they're getting on a plane and coming to play here."

Melien also notes the growing number of multiple-engagement "residencies" around town leave fewer nights available for single-night concert stops. And in the big picture, the pie is growing as "the tourism fan base is moving more and more toward artist-based content, which is everything from residents to one-off shows."

Minichino says the SLS's isolated, north-Strip location makes it a "destination property" almost by default. "Having an additional entertainment offering on the high volume of the weekends will start to catch the attention of other people to come down to the property."

In retrospect, the original strategy of working the club demographic to the exclusion of everyone else was such a colossal blunder, you might wonder just what they were thinking?

Perhaps they were thinking about 10 years of entertainment in the very room that became The Foundry.

The music club is the former Sahara showroom, but not the classic-Vegas Congo Room that hosted Johnny Carson and Sonny & Cher.

This one was part of the "new Sahara," built out as a theater — with auditorium seating replacing the showroom table-and-booth seating — in 2000 on a lease to magician Steve Wyrick.

Maybe it was built on an ancient and cursed burial ground. Wyrick went on to a succession of failed projects and bankruptcy. The Sahara theater became a revolving door for the rest of its days, whether it hosted established draws such as the Scintas or train-wreck experiments such as "Raw Talent Live."

Even a solidly branded musical, an adaptation of "Saturday Night Fever," disappointed in 2004. The theater closed a few months before the rest of the Sahara in 2011, having come full circle to another magician, Rick Thomas.

Blame runs both directions, and management disuputes or lawsuits derailed an elaborate magic show from Brett Daniels and a hand-off to experienced producer David Saxe.

Still, it's not a stretch to say the Sahara showroom represented everything that was wrong with Las Vegas entertainment in the 2000s: Tired, recycled formats and/or lopsided "rent the room" deals doomed from the get-go.

Hence, a little sympathy for SLS executives choosing to make a clean sweep of the past and say "No thanks" to magicians and topless shows.

But now Melien notes the town's larger "shift from (production shows) to music. This is a piece of that. I think it's great for the north end of the Strip, too."

And Minichino knows, if only by the room's history, to never say never when it comes to a weeknight or afternoon show to expand the club's usage. "If there's an opportunity that makes sense for the venue, we're all in the business to be successful," he says.

Then again, history also backs him up when he adds, "we want to make sure we make the right choice in rolling out this venue."

— Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.