Every year millions of people are lured to the playgrounds of Las Vegas and as well-known casino developer Steve Wynn quipped, “they´re coming here to play and that is what Las Vegas is all about. It´s a playpen.”
In the book, “In Winner Takes All”, Las Vegas journalist, Christina Binkley writes that we learn about Steve Wynn who began his business career running the family’s bingo operation after his father died.
As a result of his initial success, he was able to save up enough money to purchase a small interest in the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas where he and his wife Elaine moved in 1967.
From this time onwards he never looked back and after a successful land deal in 1971 involving Howard Hughes and Caesars Palace, he was able to secure a controlling interest in the famous Golden Nugget Las Vegas.
It was here where he began to use his enormous creative talents in renovating, revamping and expanding the Golden Nugget from a mere gambling hall to a resort hotel and casino with tremendous success. And in the process he was successful in attracting a new upscale clientele to downtown Las Vegas.
This was only the beginning of his subsequent acquisitions involving various other casinos as the lavish and luxurious Mirage with its indoor forest and out door volcano, Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, Bellagio with its opulence which cost over a billion dollars to construct and which even attracted high-end boutiques, restaurants and a museum-quality art gallery.
Eventually, Wynn sold his Mirage Resorts to Kirk Kerkorian who controlled MGM Grand Inc and with the monies earned he made a come back with Wynn Las Vegas.
What is remarkable about Wynn, as Binkley points out, is that his timing was uncanny for after he bought the Desert Inn, Las Vegas began to share off its reputation as a nursing home for failed acting and singing careers, cheesy hotels, and bad food. Source
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