After more than 25 years doing what he does, Jerry Klint still comes charging out of bed in the morning. Of course, he’ll tell you it’s easy to be passionate when your job is as exciting and rewarding as his.
Klint is vice president of development and construction for Hakkasan Group, supervising design and management for the global hospitality giant’s projects worldwide. In Las Vegas, that means delivering new restaurants like Herringbone and pushing the speedy development of new nightclub Jewel, but those projects are only a fraction of what Hakkasan is doing. “From this year into the first quarter of 2017, we have 10 domestic projects and 10 international projects all in some stage, cradle to grave,” he says. “It’s a really exciting place to be right now and an exciting role, considering the people and places I get to engage with. It sounds cliché, but honestly, in my years here, I’ve never felt for one day that I was just getting up and coming to work. It always changes, and it’s never boring.”
Klint and his cohorts make it look easy, delivering incredible, memorable, unique venues in various cities around the world, but there’s a galaxy of complexity involved, from language barriers to jurisdictional issues. “One big project is a bit easier to manage than 10 small projects which each go through their own process,” he says. “The most exciting thing for me is taking a concept we’re just talking about and nine or 12 months later you walk in and see it in reality. I can hardly believe we actually created that and it’s that close to what we imagined those few months ago.”
Jewel, which will open May 19 at Aria on the Las Vegas Strip, is coming into focus now, and if Klint is excited about it, we should be, too. “Everyone said Omnia was the new threshold, that the bar had been set. I can tell you that in technology, Jewel is different, equally exciting, and is using new technology that has not been seen anywhere in the U.S. yet,” he says. “We are working with some new products and the first tests have been jaw-dropping moments.”
