In case you didn't hear, Las Vegas entered a new era last week. Steve Wynn's eponymous $2.7 billion resort extravaganza opened, complete with the usual compliment of high-end restaurants, shows and stores. If you believe all the talk, Wynn Las Vegas will "re-invent" Las Vegas the same way that the Mirage did in 1989, or Bellagio in 1998. The city will never be the same.
Or maybe not.
You see, while the Wynn Resort now stands at the apex of Strip casinos—of the image Las Vegas presents to the world—it announces that we're at the end of what we can do with a typical resort casino. And despite its great attention to detail, and its genuine opulence (including a golf course and a Ferrari dealership), Wynn is typical.
For awhile it offers a promise of a rich integration of the private and the public, the elitist and the populist, but in the end it is content with merely being the Bellagio, only a little nicer. It is, indeed, an imperfect dream.
There are some things Wynn could have done differently, but we'll get to those later.
Steve Wynn is trying to draw a distinction between the exterior-oriented resorts which cater to pedestrians, and his new inner-looking project, which saves its surprises for people walking in. He gets off to a good start. There's no doubt the curving slab of the new Wynn Las Vegas resort hotel strikes the most impressive pose of all the mega casinos on the Strip. Devoid of both garish theme park fluffery and the bulky tri-wing look that Wynn has correctly likened to a "linebacker with no neck," the new resort's shape is like watching a baseball slugger in midswing. It's a modern and confident form. The bronze glass façade is inscrutable —it offers no "theme" other than its own cool, soaring lines—yet it's unexpectedly interactive, too. Just watch the way the building catches passing clouds in its embrace, or the fiery tango it dances with the setting sun.
Of course Wynn's main exterior feature is a towering man-made mountain festooned with pine trees and waterfalls. Gawkers quickly found the Designated Photo Op site, on a bridge running over a small lagoon that stands between the mountain and Las Vegas Boulevard. As artificial Las Vegas mountains go, it's impressive, but no different than the other artificial mountains Wynn built in front of Treasure Island and the Mirage, both of which you can see if you turn around.
Wynn Las Vegas does make a clear break with its predecessor, Bellagio. But it's a step back. The sidewalk of the Bellagio abuts a huge lake, and the huge open space feels like the casino is throwing open its arms to capture you in its voluptuous embrace. There are even benches to sit down. It's the best public space in the core city. At Wynn, the mountain obscures everything from ground level and is guarded by a green fence. There are no benches. The real show is inside, screams the building, but the message is a little cold, and we wonder, "What's inside that's worth this kind of imperial posturing?"
So we venture in to find out.
Flowers and floral imagery dominate the interior landscape of the new resort. The main entryway leads into a garden-like atrium space. Flowers flank two rows of trees, and hang in colorful balls from the branches. Flower mosaics weave a path across the floor tile. Floral patterns grace the walls, the ceilings and the carpet. It lends the resort an air of warmth. At Wynn there are the same light handsome Italian accents as at Bellagio, but mixed in with a more playful, deeper, richer color palate that feels French.
Everywhere inside Wynn Las Vegas there is that little bit of extra. The pillars are decorated with diamond-shaped tiles. The walls are textured with little nylon/silk bunting. Tassels hang from lamp shade on the wall, and from ceiling light fixtures. And there are curves everywhere: tables, stairway landings, entry ways. Even the buffet looks like an art gallery.
The interior spaces of the casino are both better planned and more organic than at other casinos. Spaces don't overwhelm you with their size, or disorient you with a windowless and gloomy atmosphere. In fact, the casino itself is no longer the reason d'etre for being on the premises, as it's possible to walk through the hotel, shop, eat and check in, without passing through the casino. And the casino floor was quieter than I'm used to elsewhere. I didn't hear the doo-doo-di-do of the Wheel of Fortune game.
And yet, a sense of disappointment gnawed at me. For all of Wynn's talk about the pleasures of being on the inside looking, rather than on the outside looking in, I expected something far more dramatic inside—like walking into Wynn Las Vegas and discovering that half the interior had been taken over by a huge public park. Can you imagine walking halfway in, past check in, past some slot machines, past the sleek restaurants, and then finding yourself in the middle of a pint-size Central Park, all trees and curving pathways, streams, benches, and water, fresh air, and at the edges, shops and restaurants, but plenty of space in the heart of this park to find a moment's quiet, to truly be out of the city, and off the property? A place that shattered the distinctions between inside and outside, public and private, that which is for the elites and that which is for the rest of us. In short, an almost secret place to rejuvenate your soul, deep behind enemy lines, as it were, a place that would make a mockery of the "fake-outdoor" Canal Shoppes at the Venetian and would literally challenge our very notions of space and how space can be used?
That's a $2.7 billion idea to get excited about.
The closest Wynn comes is a balcony that looks out toward a huge two-story glass wall, beyond which is a view of the backside of Wynn's giant mountain, complete with waterfall, a large lagoon, and an outdoor patio. At the center of the mountain is a white screen, about the size of a movie theater screen, made of small, smooth stones. At night the screen will be part of an entertainment. During the day, a mesmerizing cascade of water falls over it. Inside, overhead, a series of colorful parasols hang from the ceiling, gently twirling around, softly rising up and down, as if caught on the slightest breeze. It's the casino's most playful and majestic interior space.
But the curving escalator that leads down to the "lake level" is barred by a velvet rope—you have to buy a drink to get to the patio below. So people mostly milled about on the balcony and took pictures.
Wynn's casino is first rate, but it never challenges your notion of what a Las Vegas casino resort is. It refines the existing paradigm nicely, but it offers only a hint, a cruel tease of the imagination of what a truly revolutionary project might look like: A public park in the midst of the lights, where at every turn you're engaged with both the interior, technological, and materialist—and with the exterior, natural and spiritual. That's a statement a real city of the 21st century would make.