As We See It

What MGM’s Park can learn from the Linq

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The Park and Monte Carlo Theater

Lost in the booming buildup around the impending arrival of the T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip (and the pay-to-park furor it inspired) is the fast-approaching opening of the Park.

What is the Park? It’s a simple name for an exciting development, MGM Resorts’ dining and entertainment district running between the New York-New York and Monte Carlo hotel-casino properties and connecting Las Vegas Boulevard to the arena. The late-January announcement of its April 4 debut was full of typical hyperbole and platitudes—the odd-but-I-guess-accurate boast of creating the Strip’s first park, and numerous mind-numbing descriptors like “neighborhood environment,” “authentic oasis,” “diverse social spaces” and “connective tissue.” What are we talking about here? It’s a place where people can walk and buy stuff, eat and drink and be entertained. It’s like the Strip, only shorter and with more trees.

Another way to look at the Park is to compare it to the Linq, even if that’s not recommended by respective developers, MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. They might not match up when considering the anchors of each project. The Park will have the $375 million, 20,000-seat arena and Monte Carlo’s 5,000-seat concert venue; the Linq has the 550-foot, $550 million High Roller observation wheel and the sprawling 80,000-square-foot Brooklyn Bowl concert venue. But both seek to capitalize on the Strip’s mighty foot traffic; both endeavor to generate nongaming income for casino companies using spaces that had not yet been monetized; and both will end up evolving their adjacent properties. (The Linq Promenade eventually converted the Imperial Palace-turned-Quad resort into the Linq, and MGM has all but promised a rebranding of the Monte Carlo.)

Bob Morse joined Caesars Entertainment as president of hospitality one month after the Linq Promenade opened, in the spring of 2014. He wasn’t involved in conceptualizing the outdoor, pedestrian-oriented retail thoroughfare that was once a delivery alley between Imperial Palace and the Flamingo, but he knows the vision of the promenade was at the forefront of the Strip’s nongaming business trend. “It’s been turned into something that has become a must-see, must-do when you come to Vegas,” he says.

Indeed, the High Roller wheel, $26.95 during the day or $36.95 at night for a 30-minute revolution, is becoming a go-to for local Las Vegans to take tourist friends or family when in town—the true measure of a favorite Vegas attraction. (Caesars declined to provide statistics on how many riders the wheel has seen, but Morse said it’s “the No. 1 attraction by far” compared to similar Strip stops like Madame Tussauds wax museum or the Stratosphere’s rides.) The Happy Half Hour promotion, basically turning your High Roller cabin into a bar, has boosted the wheel’s popularity.

A handful of the restaurants, bars and stores along the Linq Promenade have turned over, but overall, Morse says Caesars is very happy with its performance. “The High Roller has been very successful for us financially, and it acts as an attraction to get a whole bunch of people to do nothing else but walk up and down the promenade,” he says. “Looking at all the revenue produced there and looking at the cost to develop it, it’s been a great success.”

Caesars has been active in making changes and additions to the promenade. More venues offer live entertainment. A High Roller ticketing kiosk was recently converted into a Strip-front office where you can get information, make reservations and buy tickets to events at any Caesars property, and recently announced restaurants on the way include Virgil’s Real BBQ and a Gordon Ramsay fish and chips joint. “We’re constantly trying to reinvent ourselves,” Morse says.

If MGM’s Park can learn anything from the progress of the Linq, it’s that the experience provided must continue to change—not that this is something hospitality execs need to be told. That’s the whole point of the Park, and the Linq, to provide Vegas visitors with something different from the casino-centered vacation that has always been associated with the Strip. But you have to wonder, when looking at the roster of venues planned for the Park—a beer garden, a party sushi spot, Bruxie gourmet waffles from Orange County, California Pizza Kitchen—how long it will be before this something different starts to feel something like the same.

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Brock Radke

Brock Radke is an award-winning writer and columnist who currently occupies the role of editor-at-large at Las Vegas Weekly magazine. ...

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