Sunday, April 24, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Strip resorts have roots in Florida, Mexico

Two hotels led way in terms of physical dimensions, concepts

Wynn Las Vegas, the biggest and most expensive destination resort ever, opens on the north end of the Strip this week, but it began with a concept that started 50 years ago in Miami and Acapulco, Mexico.

Las Vegas developer Steve Wynn, who often is credited with creating the Strip as it is today, clearly helped pioneer the idea of giant destination resorts, but he didn't invent the megaresort.

Instead, they were created by a handful of developers who took the hospitality and gaming industries to the next level.

Wynn said the creation of destination resorts laid the groundwork for modern Las Vegas after it began "losing its edge" in the 1960s.

"There were two breakaway resorts, two original ideas in the last century," Wynn said. "One of them was done by an unlikely person, a shipping billionaire named Dan Ludwig."

Ludwig, an American who was one of the richest men in the world, owned a private shipping fleet. His business was even bigger than that of Stavros Niarchos or Aristotle Onassis, who made larger headlines, but smaller fortunes.

"Dan Ludwig had a hobby. He liked hotels. And he liked going to Acapulco," Wynn said.

"In the '50s, Dan Ludwig built the Acapulco Princess, the foundation of all the atrium hotels that have ever been built," he said, explaining how Ludwig's hotel had a pool and lagoon that flowed into the lobby, which featured a large atrium filled with huge trees.

Soon, "everybody else copied Dan Ludwig with a tropical theme, fantasy island resort," Wynn said.

Ludwig was influenced by another small-time hotelier in Miami Beach, Fla., where "every single hotel was identical and right next to one another," he said.

Ben Novak, who had promoted himself into controlling interest of the little Sans Souci Hotel, got an option on 16 acres on the water, and with architect Maurice Lapidus, "they decided to build a hotel that in and of itself was an entertainment," Wynn said of Miami Beach's Fontainebleau Hotel.

"So total was it as a breakaway in terms of its physical dimensions and its conceptual foundations that it looked like it came from another planet. There'd never been anything in Florida like it, or anywhere else," he said.

It was the Fontainebleau that also influenced Jay Sarno, the developer of Caesars Palace and Circus Circus.

"Jay Sarno tripped-out there. I was in high school and my folks had a cabana. We lived there in Miami. ... Elaine's father and mother had a cabana there," Wynn said.

Sarno was a little older. "So stunned was he by this hotel that he dreamt about it at night, he told me," Wynn said. Sarno started with a Roman-themed hotel in Atlanta called the Cabana.

He built a second one in Palo Alto, Calif., that also turned out to be a hit. Then, Sarno, whom Wynn credits with leading Las Vegas' renaissance, set his sights on Nevada.

He started to design and build the Las Vegas Cabana, "the Desert Cabana. (That)'s still the parent company if you look at the stock certificates," Wynn said.

The developer changed the name to Caesars Palace at the last minute when someone convinced him it made more sense because of its Roman theme, Wynn said.

"And of course everybody ate it up. It was a fantasy. It was fun. ... All the things that people liked (were) right there, dished up by Jay Sarno," Wynn said. "Right when Las Vegas was getting boring."

Wynn was among those in attendance on opening night at Caesars Palace.

"I loved the place," he said, noting he placed his bid on the Frontier Hotel that weekend after staying at Caesars on opening night. "It reminded me of the Fontainebleau, not in terms of what it looked like, but the dynamic that was at work. A new way of giving people the old thing."

Wynn added: "Sarno took the town into another era. It's no coincidence that the leading hotels for two decades at both ends of the economic spectrum, the high end, Caesars, and the low end, Circus Circus, were both from the head of the same crazy bastard: Sarno."

"Circus Circus and Caesars Palace were the new Las Vegas. They added a fantasy component to the experience," he said.

"In the '70s, everybody added rooms, put in cheap buffets and tried to be the Circus. That's why Las Vegas languished," Wynn said.

But, thanks to a revolution in Wall Street financing and the foundation that destination resort developers had laid, Wynn was able to develop The Mirage, which is widely credited with the rebirth of Las Vegas.

Then came Treasure Island, Bellagio and now Wynn Las Vegas, his latest dream, but perhaps not his last.

"I don't want to do a hotel like the Fontainebleau," he said. "I want someone to do a hotel like mine, not because I'm egotistical about it but because that represents the successful use of the talent and the energy that I'd like to think of us being involved in," Wynn said.

That sounds like there is more to come.