Chihuly and Wynn faxed designs back and forth for a lobby piece that would be worthy of the most beautiful hotel in the world, as Wynn saw it. Wynn visited Chihuly’s Seattle studio three times. They agreed that Chihuly would create a piece with 1,000 glass flowers in a sea of brilliantly colored glass, abstract in its design, which would hang from the ceiling above the lobby floor. Chihuly designed a new type of armature strong enough to hold the pieces. Every petal in the seventy-by-thirty-foot sculpture was hand blown at the studio, assembled, then disassembled and shipped to Bellagio, where it was reassembled.
When it arrived, Wynn wasn’t satisfied with 1,000 flowers, and he wanted more orange colors, despite Chihuly’s objections (and Elaine’s—she doesn’t like the color orange). Chihuly finally added orange lights behind the sculpture. “It was the only way we could figure out how to do it,” Chihuly says.
Ultimately, the Chihuly sculpture contained 2,000 glass elements and weighed more than 50,000 pounds in glass and steel. They called it Fiori di Como—“Flowers of Como”—in honor of the city of Bellagio.
By the spring of 1998, Wynn was one of the top art buyers on the planet. “What we’re doing is going to be better than the Getty,” he said that April, referring to the Los Angeles museum with a $5-billion endowment.
Wall Street analysts and investors began asking how much this was costing. The dolphins and their habitat at the Mirage had cost $30 million. Shadow Creek had cost $40 million. The art started looking outlandishly expensive at $165 million, and Wynn was still out raising his paddle at auctions.
Investors were getting angry, but few had the guts to ask Steve Wynn about his spending. The person they nailed to the cross instead was Dan Lee.
Bellagio was fast approaching a new and frightening threshold—the $2-billion mark. Applying some of the same creative talents he had displayed as a boy selling cut-up Playboy photographs, Lee began to describe the cost of Bellagio “excluding art.”
This created confusion about the cost of Bellagio that has never been cleared up. Eventually, Lee would place the property’s cost at “One point seven billion… plus art”—which means it cost about two billion dollars.
Mirage Resorts would later reveal in a January 2000 conference call that the art was the most costly attraction of any of its casinos. The pirate battle at Treasure Island cost roughly $2 per patron; the dolphins and Siegfried and Roy’s tigers at the Mirage cost $3.70 per head; and the Bellagio art gallery cost $4.75 per customer.
So, whose art was it anyway?
Much of it was Wynn’s. Lee estimated that of $300 million worth of art, Wynn personally owned about $125 million—or slightly less than half. Shareholders paid for the rest. Wynn and Mirage Resorts forged an agreement in 1998, approved by the board of directors, obligating Bellagio to pay Wynn $4.8 million a year to lease the art he owned personally. It cost Mirage Resorts shareholders roughly 2.5 cents per share, before taxes.
Overseeing Bellagio’s end of this deal with Wynn was his old friend and right-hand man, Bobby Baldwin, who was president of Bellagio. One of Baldwin’s roles at Mirage Resorts was to give Wynn bad news. His chosen method was to walk into Wynn’s office, blurt it out, and survive the ensuing storm. Baldwin says he once watched Wynn throw a phone book at his brother, Ken Wynn. “It was painful, but we recovered quickly,” he says.
There is no evidence that Baldwin seriously challenged Wynn on the art habit he was feeding at Bellagio’s expense. As Dan Lee tap-danced around the topic, Baldwin approved contract after contract for Wynn’s personal trades and leases with Bellagio.
Using the company’s money to buy and lease art enabled Wynn to behave like a much bigger player in the art world than he could personally afford. Art changed Steve and Elaine Wynn’s lives. For the opening of Bellagio, the Wynns were going to be on the cover of Vanity Fair—a publication that their public relations man, Alan Feldman, had groveled to several years earlier.
“I never thought as a humble student that I would ever be in a position to own masterworks of art,” Wynn told the television interviewer Charlie Rose. “That was for the Rockefellers and the Whitneys and the Vanderbilts and the likes of that.… And then, life went by, and opportunity was very kind.”
Wynn was willing to give up a lot to finance his art habit, including diluting his control of Mirage Resorts. Starting in February 1998, Wynn began to sell off his shares in Mirage, three million shares in tranches of $24 and $24.75 a share. That month alone, his stake in the company fell from 15.8 percent to 14.2 percent.
From the perspective of Wall Street, a chief executive’s sale of shares is a yellow caution light—a signal that he believes his shares are overvalued. Then investors were further startled when construction delays forced Wynn to push back Bellagio’s opening from March 1998 to October. Mirage’s stock price began to fall.
Joseph Coccimiglio, an analyst with Prudential Securities, published a report entitled “Bellagio: Titanic or Waterworld?” in April 1998. He compared Bellagio to two big-spending movies of the time, James Cameron’s Titanic, which won an Academy Award after predictions of failure, and Waterworld, a famously expensive Kevin Costner box-office bust.
“The market is pricing Mirage’s stock as if Bellagio is going to turn out to be the hotel/casino equivalent of Waterworld!” Coccimiglio wrote.
The Mirage’s return on invested capital at that point was 29 percent, Coccimiglio noted, while Treasure Island’s was 23 percent. He predicted Bellagio’s would be 17 percent.
New casinos were putting pressure on returns as gamblers had more choices about where to place their bets. Hilton Hotels was building Paris Las Vegas. Sheldon Adelson was building the Venetian on the old Sands property he’d bought from Kerkorian and warring with Wynn over whose rooms would be nicest. Circus Circus was building a gold-towered Mirage knockoff called Mandalay Bay at the far southern end of the Strip. Suddenly, everybody was putting in marble baths.
Wynn continued selling off assets that had once been dear to him. During his six years at Lake Tahoe, he had become a director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and had even developed a green streak, convincing the agency to ban Jet Skis to protect the lake from leaked fuel. Old Forge, the Wynns’ five-acre Tahoe estate, was separated from the Milkens’ estate by only one piece of land, and the two families had a close circle of friends at Tahoe. But Wynn sold the 12,000-square-foot house and grounds of Old Forge, including its private beach and pier, in April 1998 for $25 million.
Wynn sold another three million shares of Mirage stock in August 1998. This time, he had to take a significantly lower price—$21.50 a share. His stake in Mirage Resorts dwindled to 11 percent. He later said he believed his company was too big to be vulnerable.
Kerkorian, who controlled his own destiny with a stake of more than half of MGM Grand’s stock, watched Mirage Resorts’ share price tumble. Wynn’s options dived “underwater”—which in finance lingo meant they were worthless until the share price rose substantially. Conveniently for Wynn, the Mirage board decided to re-price Wynn’s options in December 1998, shortly after Bellagio opened. This gave Wynn the opportunity to buy 1.8 million shares at a bargain-basement price of $14.375 per share. It was an astoundingly low price and an inexcusably generous reward for a chief executive whose stewardship had overseen such a dramatic decline in share price in the preceding months.
Even with storms blowing around him, there seemed to be no compromises in Wynn. For Bellagio’s art catalog, Wynn insisted on using the same printer as used by Sotheby’s and Christie’s—Arti Grafiche Amilcare Pizzi S.P.A. in Milan, Italy—requiring numerous transatlantic flights for everyone.
Wynn seemed giggly with anticipation of Bellagio’s opening. He made a mischievous pitch on the hotel’s huge sign: COMING SOON: VAN GOGH. MONET. RENOIR AND CéZANNE! WITH SPECIAL GUESTS PICASSO AND MATISSE.
The invitations to Bellagio’s opening arrived in black velvet boxes measuring nine inches high by thirteen inches across by two and a half inches
deep. The velvet was imprinted with a gold Edwardian script “B.” The invitation that lay inside was more of a booklet—a dozen pages encased in a spectacularly beautiful Japanese paper that was laced with fine copper-colored threads, chosen personally by Wynn. “And so it begins,” it began.
The booklet contained an invitation from “Stephen and Elaine Wynn” to four days of celebratory activities, from Sunday through Wednesday, October 18–21. Sunday was for “Arrival,” Monday and Tuesday for “Relaxation and Discovery,” Monday evening was the opening of the show O followed by a dinner, and Tuesday evening was for “Culinary Discovery” at one of Bellagio’s restaurants. On Wednesday, there was “Brunch and Farewells.”
Beneath this invitation in a special cavity in the black velvet box lay a video, encased in the same copper-threaded paper. YOUR PERSONAL INTRODUCTION TO BELLAGIO the case read. The tape held a short, romantic film accompanied by the opera singer Andrea Bocelli singing “Con Te Partirò.”
This Bellagio romance was of a Harlequin nature. It began with a handsome, middle-aged man in a dark suit. He stood alone, staring sternly across the mists of Bellagio’s lake. From afar, a beautiful young woman in a dark evening gown spotted him and approached, descending from one of Bellagio’s stone terraces. The camera rested momentarily on her chest as she ran. She flashed a coy smile and cast her eyes downward—inviting, shy, and flirtatious.
The image flashed to the shooting fountains of Bellagio. Streams of white, frothing water cascaded into the air as Bocelli’s aria came to a crescendo in full coital eruption. In a parting shot, the woman’s hand caressed the man’s. Both were dripping wet.
It wasn’t as crass as strippers.
Wynn moved his offices right over to Bellagio from the now-dated Mirage. The blazing colors of his Mirage office were traded for a sea of cream, with glass walls looking out onto a private lawn for his dogs.
A long wall of fine, burled elm flanked one of two wings. The blond and chocolate swirls in the millwork concealed cabinetry that contained, among other things, a state-of-the art television and stereo system. Two baseball bats hung from the millwork to the right of the door. One of these bats had once belonged to Babe Ruth, according to people in the office.
At times, the executive suite was like a kennel. There were almost always dogs there—Wynn’s German shepherds and smaller lap dogs; Bobby Baldwin’s dogs; other canine visitors belonging to his assistants and others working there. It was entirely commonplace to hear barking during telephone conversations—and even during the quarterly conference calls at which the company discussed its financial results.
Wynn’s personal driveway to his Bellagio offices was hidden by a high wall and could be entered via an electronically operated gate. This gate could be accessed from the executive parking area, which was also hidden behind a high wall and entered by passing through an electronic gate. And this gate, too, was hidden behind a third long high wall, which was reached through yet another electronic gate, which was also watched by a uniformed guard. Thus, reaching Wynn required passing the scrutiny of one guard, three electronic gates, a state-of-the-art surveillance system, and two highly trained German attack dogs.
On the Monday two weeks before Bellagio’s opening, Wynn emerged from this cocoon to begin a series of employee pep rallies at the Golden Nugget, the Mirage, Treasure Island, and Bellagio. He began with four hundred employees in a Golden Nugget conference room. Increasingly blind, Wynn walked toward the platform alone, knocked his foot against the bottom stair to identify its location, stepped up two stairs, and headed for the lectern.
“Hi,” he began, wanting to draw a link between his dreams and theirs. “I know who you are,” Wynn told the crowd. “And I know why you’re here.”
He entertained them with his great life story. He called his friend Clint Eastwood—his neighbor at Sun Valley for sixteen years—a “closet intellectual.” He did an impression of Eastwood addressing his son Kyle, home from school after months away. “Hi, son, wanna beer?”
He continued, “I came from the Golden Nugget. This is the base of it all.” Bellagio is the “latest addition to this family of hotels that springs from here.”
After the rally, Wynn headed back to Bellagio to see his friend Barbara Walters. She was in Nevada to interview Jeremy Strohmeyer, a young man who had been convicted of raping and killing seven-year-old Sherrice Iverson at a Primm, Nevada, casino. The case brought sadly into focus one of the ugliest outcomes of gambling addiction—children being left unaccompanied in casinos while their parents wager.
This was a problem that ate at Wynn. He had come so far from his original concept for Treasure Island that, at Bellagio, he had decided to ban children unless they were staying in the hotel. “Children don’t belong in casinos,” he said flatly.
Barbara Walters and Wynn met under the Chihuly sculpture and moved on together, dropping names throughout their tour of future restaurants and shops. Wynn ricocheted through the construction zone, tripping over an electric cord and banging into a low partition. Walters was happy to learn that her friend Fred Leighton was opening a jewelry shop at Bellagio. Wynn told her he’d sold a Picasso to Henry Kravis, the king of leveraged buyouts. He told her in a stage whisper that Françoise Gilot, Picasso’s lover, was coming to Bellagio’s opening!
In the baccarat salon, Wynn pointed to the carpet and said it had been woven by hand in Shanghai and imported in one piece.
After the newscaster left for the airport, Wynn stood in a hallway and puzzled over where to place a Viola Frey sculpture. “Will more people come here or to the other end?” he asked his designer, Roger Thomas. Wynn pondered for several seconds. “Here,” he said finally, pointing to the entrance of the shopping esplanade.
Wynn then moved on to the Picasso Restaurant, where a photo of Picasso by Man Ray was being hung. Wynn wanted to inspect the photograph, which was an art object itself.
Libby Lumpkin, Wynn’s curator, awaited him along with Thomas. They stood beside a table that was covered with Man Ray original photographs.
Wynn announced that he wanted to check the Man Ray seal on the back of one picture. With his bare, unwashed hands, he pulled the photo out of its matting. Lumpkin reached out to hand him a pair of white cotton gloves. Wynn ignored her.
Oils and acids on the skin can do irreparable harm to art. “Yes, you really should wear gloves,” Thomas interjected, squirming.
“It’s OK,” Wynn said dismissively. He flipped the photo over to see the stamp—MAN RAY IN PARIS—as Lumpkin and Thomas inhaled sharply.
Barehanded, Wynn flipped undaunted through more photos. Lumpkin handed him one of Picasso at a bullfight.
“Stinking sport,” erupted Wynn, the animal lover. “Rotten chickenshits. What a sport.… How much courage does that take?”
Rumors that Wynn was touching his amazing artworks—he once waxed poetic on the sensation of touching Van Gogh’s brushstrokes—eventually reached Charlie Rose, who asked him about it in a televised interview on July 11, 2005. Wynn conceded equably that he’d done it, and that it was “a no-no under most circumstances.”
Earlier that afternoon, before Bellagio opened, Thomas and Wynn reminisced about their first meeting. The moment contained worlds of information about Wynn’s forceful character.
THOMAS: I was twelve. We met in an elevator in Tahoe. You were skiing.
WYNN: You were fourteen.
THOMAS: I was twelve.
WYNN: You were fourteen.
THOMAS: My math must not be so good.
WYNN: You were fourteen.
Having vanquished Thomas, Wynn headed to Sam’s American Restaurant to lay into the poor young chef, Sam DeMarco. DeMarco’s menu included dishes like s’mores, black beans, and fried eggs. Wynn didn’t like the decor or the food. Then he banged his shin and got caught in a billowing curtain that hung from the ceiling as a room divider.
DeMarco flinched as Wynn scowled at his plans to hang sculptures on the wall. “You’re just going to mount
these from the wall?” Wynn demanded. “How you gonna light ’em?… You’re gonna get a halo effect. This is the kind of thing that I’d have to see with a model. I don’t have the guts to do that without seeing it. It’s too avant garde—it’s too risky.”
DeMarco looked sick as Wynn stomped out. But Wynn’s instincts proved correct: The restaurant was not a success and closed quickly.
Wynn led his entourage to the hotel’s front desk. The Chihuly sculpture on the ceiling was unlit. Behind the long desk, where he had once imagined a Titian or Caravaggio, was the facade of an Italianate building and garden—oddly plain in the ornate palace of the Bellagio.
“What I need is pots,” Wynn announced. His brother, Kenny, who had met up with him at DeMarco’s restaurant, and three others grabbed a three-foot pot of plants and struggled to bring it over. “Now, that’s what you don’t expect to see behind the front desk,” Wynn said, pleased.
Wynn decided he wanted to rehearse the dancing fountains. He marched through Bellagio’s porte cochere, where the drive was littered with construction equipment. “When are these guys going to get this shit out of here?” Wynn demanded.
The sidewalk in front of Bellagio had been wired for sound. There were woofers in the base of the streetlights and tweeters under the lanterns, so when the music started, it came from nowhere and everywhere. Wynn declined to divulge the cost of all that. “That’s about money. We’re artists here,” he said coolly.
Mist, created by ultrasonic vibration, covered the lake and spread like a fog. Music poured from the streetlights: Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring (a piece that was later cut from the lineup). Wynn raised his arms and began to direct the fountains as if they were an orchestra.
Passersby stopped to watch and to point. Wynn danced. “It’s all a balance thing, isn’t it?” he asked. “It was appropriate to the place, just like the volcano.”
The next piece, Wynn said, represented Las Vegas to him. An aria by Pavarotti, “Rondine al Nido.” “Remember this—you’re in Las Vegas!” he said with a grin, lifting his arms to the music. “Entertainment and good taste can go hand in hand here. They’re not just for effete snobs—they’re for everybody.”
Winner Takes All Page 11