Wynn Las Vegas, built at a cost of US$2.7 billion, is a casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The resort is named after casino developer Steve Wynn. It is the flagship belongings of Wynn Resorts Limited.
The 2,716 rooms range in size from 620 square feet (58 m²) to the villas at 7,000 square feet (650 m²).
Wynn Las Vegas is one of the tallest buildings in Las Vegas, towering 50 stories over the Las Vegas Strip. It is situated at Las Vegas Boulevard South and Sands Avenue, across from the Fashion Show Mall.
The property features a 111,000 ft² (10,200 m²) casino, a 3 acre (12,000 m²) lake, 18 restaurants and bars, 26 retail outlets in 76,000 square feet (7,000 m²) of space, one of which is a Ferrari-Maserati dealership, an art gallery, and two wedding chapels. A convention center with 223,000 ft² (20,700 m²) of space is also available.
In a departure from the previous trend of providing free sidewalk attractions to draw in customers, the Wynn Las Vegas is constructed so that visitors must enter the site to view the free attractions. The most important feature is large, flat waterfall stationed behind the mountain, running into a small "lake", both of which have images displayed on them to make a unique show on the hour, every hour, starting at some point in the afternoon.
The historic Desert Inn Golf Course was rebuilt while the hotel was being constructed. The new course, the only one on the Las Vegas Strip, was designed by Steve Wynn and Tom Fazio, who before worked together on the Shadow Creek Golf Club, also in Las Vegas. Called the "Wynn Golf and Country Club", use of the course is restricted to hotel guests at a cost of $500 per round.
History
The site was assembled by buying the Desert Inn Hotel and Golf course for most of the land. The remainder was acquired by purchasing private residences that were commonly located along Paradise Avenue. While some owners sold early on, others held out. This resulted in many legal actions between the different parties. In the end, the site acquired totaled 215 acres (870,000 m²).
The first commercial for the hotel aired in some local spots during the 2005 Super Bowl. The commercial stands out in that Wynn stood atop the edge of his tall building (with a helicopter a few feet away).
Wynn Las Vegas opened on April 28, 2005, Wynn's wife's birthday.
Attractions
Nightclubs are an important part of the resort, as are theaters housing several production shows.
One production show is Avenue Q, which enjoyed considerable success on Broadway.
The other production show is a new, 1 million gallon water-oriented production, entitled "Le Rêve" (the original name of the resort project), designed by Franco Dragone. No seat is more than 40 feet (12 m) from the stage for this production. Dragone was a director of Cirque du Soleil and creator of Céline Dion's "A New Day" at Caesars Palace. Although not a Cirque du Soleil production, "Le Rêve" shares many of the uniqueness usually associated with a Cirque du Soleil show.
The resort holds much of Wynn's considerable art collection, which was mainly removed from the Bellagio following the merger of MGM Grand, Inc. and Mirage Resorts, Inc. in 2000. The collection, which focuses mostly on 19th and 20th-century works by European and American artists, includes masterpieces by Édouard Manet, Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Paul Gauguin, among others. The centerpiece of the collection is "Le Rêve," the Pablo Picasso portrait that was the resort's original namesake. Wynn reportedly purchased the painting for $42 million, one of the highest prices ever paid for a Picasso. The collection was on display at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno while the Wynn Las Vegas was being constructed and was installed in the resort soon before it was opened.
Inspiration and vision
Wynn purchased the Desert Inn hotel and casino to obtain property for his future dreams. The Desert Inn was imploded to make room for his new hotel project. The first name assigned to the hotel was Le Rêve. Along the way, Wynn Resorts Limited was created and continued development with Wynn being the controlling stock holder.
Wynn has stated that the major shift with this new resort is the concept of designing from the "inside out." In contrast to his previous hotels Bellagio and The Mirage, there is no Las Vegas Strip attraction to draw in the gawkers. Instead, visitors must venture inside to see what the hotel is all about. Wynn has said that "there is no franchise in a casual observer, there is a franchise in a guest."
