Somebody dislikes Encore

Well, I'm sure more than one person does. But since I had yet to read anything in the media that was seriously critical of Encore Las Vegas and its design, I thought I'd post the link to Tony Illia's Las Vegas CityLife critique in which he states that Encore lacks "restraint."

A few excerpts:

Wynn, always the pitchman, believes it's his greatest achievement yet. "Intimacy and richness is the difference with Encore," says Tom Breitling, the former Golden Nugget owner-turned-Wynn employee. "It's really like a boutique hotel." But nothing about the 653-foot-tall, 2,034 room mega-resort seems small or boutique-like. ...

...There is an island bar that somewhat resembles a circus merry-go-round, with four TVs and six gaming tables. There are also daybeds, lounge chairs and a sunglass-cleaning service....

...The main casino is drenched in bordello red,...

...The building is a type of large brown package, nay, present, waiting to be opened. But one architect called it a UPS truck turned on its side....

...The attention to detail is stunning, albeit excessive....

...Encore is trying too hard to impress. Every square inch is adorned with a texture, pattern or contour. There are no blank spots that simply let you breathe and experience the space. The composition is overwrought, too tightly packaged together. It can be suffocating. Encore is a sensory overload. Wynn's need to dazzle and overwhelm guests doesn't always pay off. ...

And, to be fair, he closes with this trying-to-end-on-an-up-note bit:

That said, Encore improves upon Wynn Las Vegas in many ways. The main entryway off Las Vegas Boulevard is much better. Guests pass through the front doors into an uplifting double-height space with diffuse daylight, trees and flowers. Casino corridors have natural light, which is a bold but pleasant surprise; sunlight has long been an industry taboo. The floor-level backwall is also entirely glass, allowing sunlight inside, blurring the line between indoors and out. The retail promenade, meanwhile, is wider and more leisurely than Wynn Las Vegas, which seems cramped at times. And the rooms are splendid. The mood is more relaxed, less kinetic. Glass-encased showers, deep tubs, floor-to-ceiling windows, and plasma TVs in both the bed and bathrooms encourage a pampered, lazy attitude. Rooms have couches, ottomans, writing tables and wireless Internet access as well as fine art prints and safes.

Contrast this to the glowing reviews by UNLV's Dave Schwartz in the Business Press and the Christopher Reynolds of the L.A. Times, the paper whose architectural critic once said the Wynn Las Vegas' theme was "midrise office tower in Houston, circa 1983."

I'm not saying Illia's wrong or that his opinions are invalid. I'm just posting this because they're almost the only critical thing I've seen written about the new resort.

The Strip is LIVE tonight with Mamma Mia! Alums!

We're live tonight to record this week's "The Strip" with two guests in-studio, Bradley Gray (left) and Tim Tucker (right), the only two members of the Mamma Mia! cast to remain with the show throughout its entire six-year run. Plus, news from Vegas and all the other cool stuff we do.

Join us starting at 6:45 p.m. PT for the live show and chat with other listeners at LVRocks.Com or wait until Thursday for the podcast. Your call.

Wynn or Adelson want Frontier land?

[UPDATE: Howard Stutz, the only R-J reporter whose blog is worth a damn, has this up this morning about the Adelson-Elad thing. He's as dubious as the rest of us.]

Deutsche Bank gaming analyst Bill Lerner issued this analysis this morning in his regular emails:

Bloomberg has picked up an Israeli newspaper (‘The Marker') story which reports that Las Vegas Sands will swap shares for Elad's 35 acres on the Strip. This site is located directly across from Wynn's Encore. Wynn has previously indicated an interest in this land via a similarly described swap for shares, valued at a fraction of the $35m/acre that Elad paid. Perhaps LVS is being confused for WYNN by this Israeli paper. However, if LVS proceeds with this transaction, the company would be issuing more stock for future 'greenfield' development in an environment where it has been impossible to raise capital to complete their original development pipeline. Similar to its recent primary equity offering, this transaction as described would be further dilutive. Furthermore, LVS has contiguous land in what we call its 'toilet bowl' site, which is 18 acres behind its Venetian/Palazzo/Sands Expo center in Vegas, so in our view the Elad site makes strategically less sense.

Make of it what you will. I didn't find the Bloomberg story, but I did find this Reuters piece from two hours ago in which one of Elad's main partners denies any deal pending with Las Vegas Sands or Adelson. As Lerner says, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It also doesn't make any sense for Wynn, who has all that free land behind him on the golf course to develop, to go picking up the land across the street unless he really, really, really wants to control the view and the price was ridiculously cheap.

Gosh, there are an awful lot of moving parts on the Strip these days, aren't there?

Rumor Patrol: MGM Mirage

I got MGM Mirage VP Alan Feldman on the line today for this AFP piece on the start of hiring of the 12,000 or so employees for CityCenter. As usual, some interesting stuff didn't make it into the story.

I happened to be calling Alan after buzz on the Web had reached a fever pitch that (a) the company was this/close or even done with a deal to sell off the Mirage resort, (b) the Light Group has been pushed out of management of the Harmon hotel-condo and (c) plans are afoot to halt construction on some portion of CityCenter, most likely the aforementioned Harmon.

It seemed worthwhile in that cacophony to publish Feldman's direct responses to those issues.
(a) Mirage: After reiterating that as a publicly traded company that must seriously consider any serious offer to buy any of its assets, I asked if there was any credible offer now pending on this or any of the MGM Mirage properties. His careful, inconclusive response: "There is nothing of which I am aware." That said, he also made light fun of my question as well as that of "one of your colleagues from the local newspapers who called me breathless about the sale of the Mirage. And I asked him, 'Did you get the press release?' And he said, 'No, I didn't get a press release!' And I said, 'That's because there is none.' "

(b) The Light Group and The Harmon: On this, a bit more of a solid denial. "Nothing has changed. The Light Group is the managing entity of the Harmon. There’s been no discussion otherwise on the part of the company."

(c) A CityCenter Delay: "When Boyd made a decision to put a hold on Echelon, that gave everyone pause. Obviously we’re paying very close attention to what’s going on. We’ve also had to deal with structural issues. Some rebar had to be redone at the Harmon. That’s probably added to the rumor mill. We’re going to be make certain that CityCenter is the best it possibly can be when it opens. To the extent that any other decisions are made, we’ll make them and let you know in due course."

Oh, one more thing. On the condo front, there are about 2,400 condos for sale at CityCenter. About half are reserved with 20 percent non-refundable deposits. They've gotten virtually no new ones reserved in the fourth quarter of 2008. So is there danger that if they don't sell more of them they won't be able to fund the rest of the construction?

"We’re not one of these companies running on such thin margins that we need to close on these units to make these projects work. We’re on pretty solid ground and this is real estate that’s not going anywhere. As Las Vegas goes, this is still beachfront property.”

Get it? Beachfront property in Vegas? He made a funny. He also provided a lot and a little bit of information at the same time. Thoughts?

Reason No. 456,011 Why ReviewJournal.Com Sucks

Every week about now, I prowl the Web for discussion topics for the banter portion of "The Strip," which we record on Tuesday nights. Beyond reading the dead-tree versions of the local newspapers, I regularly look to certain sites for inspiration and perhaps some news I missed. Among those, I always visit Hunter Hillegas' Two Way Hard Three (and congrats to HH for his Best Vegas Blog Trippie!!!)...


...Robin Leach's Vegas DeLuxe..


...Dave McKee's Stiffs & Georges...


...and Richard Abowitz's Moveable Buffet...


I used to also look at NormClarke.Com, but it doesn't seem like he posts any news there that's not in his print columns.

And then there's this...


That's the R-J's megablog. The DREAM TEAM. It says so. A multi-disciplinary blog that has eight different contributors. Eight highly trained roving eyes unearthing all sorts of interesting new wrinkles, some too big to wait for the next day's paper and some too small to have a home in print. Something to keep us coming back again and again.

The total number of new blog posts from the DREAM TEAM in the past week? ONE. Uno. 1. Yi. Un. Ehad. The hot scoop? Channel 8 has a new weatherwoman! Well, that couldn't wait until morning, huh?

To which I say: WTF? I praised this Vegas Voice idea back in August, when I called it "the consistently updated and interesting Vegas Voice blog." At that point, I was finding some real bits of news on there. But I've broken more news on this blog in the past two weeks than the EIGHT of them have broken combined on theirs since then. How is that even possible?

But hey, we're gonna all have ol' Nate Tannenbaum on our smart phones pretty soon reading us the newspaper, right? Can't get much more cutting edge than that! Woo hoo!

And hey, LasVegasSun.Com. Quit your giggling. You're not doing much better, and you people have real pros running your dot-com show over there who should know better. Sure, you're up to speed on political blogging, but your Culture Blog breaks no entertainment news, your Gaming & Business blog hasn't had a new post in 27 days and my pal Joe Brown, who just last week praised me in his one-year retrospective so it pains me to say this, hasn't offered up a blog item in 17 days and counting.


Hey, guys and gals in the dead-tree press. Get with the program or you'll end up on here:


Shape up or don't bitch and moan when your jobs disappear along with your circulation and your web traffic. And I say this with love. Really.

P.S. to the ReviewJournal.Com nitwits: First-quarter UNLV basketball scores are still not "breaking news." Stop sending me Twitters that say so.

Stratosphere's Fancy Restaurant Cuts Staff Hours?

While I was waiting to go on KNPR's "State of Nevada" program this morning to eulogize Mamma Mia!, a guy named James called in during a discussion of the economic downturn to report that half the employees at the fancy, rotating Top of the World Restaurant at Stratosphere have been informed this week they'd be going part-time indefinitely. (The Stratosphere spokesman has not returned a call for comment yet.)

What was interesting about this wrinkle was that Dave Berns, the host, quizzed the fellow about the cause. (Hear it here.) Stratosphere was bought about a year ago by Goldman Sachs, the troubled NYC investment house. Berns asked James if weaker business or the banking industry mess caused the cutbacks. James doesn't know, but his responses were interesting:

"December is typically slow anyway, that's always been a slow month for us. But I think one of our mistakes was, we raised our prices dramatically here once that takeover was taken. I don't know who made that decision, but I think that that was a driving force. ... We knew that something was coming but this was pretty dramatic because half of us are now on a part-time basis."

James said management said they'd get more hours if business increased. He's clearly distraught:

"We all were numb. Flat-out numb. ... We figured it would be a few of us would have to go, not half. ... We thought we were going to be OK. We're one of those premier restaurants that people want to go to because of our beautiful view ... We always have a draw of people no matter who comes to Vegas. We didn't see it coming. We were kind of blindsided."

This situation raises some interesting questions about the impact of the recession in this particular arena. It's strange that the Goldman Sachs folks jacked up the prices at Top of the World when they did; it reminds us once again what bad business decisions know-it-alls in New York make when they don't understand the Vegas market. (Yes, that means you, Elad.) Goldman Sachs has maimed the only golden goose they acquired in the transaction and who gets to suffer? James and his colleagues.

But, beyond that, restaurateurs are in an especially awkward position in this environment. Hotel rooms and show tickets can be discounted, but by and large there's no such thing as getting a 20 percent off coupon at Picasso or the Eiffel Tower Restaurant. And it is almost impossible to DROP prices on the menus, partly because the cost of ingredients and labor usually does justify the current food prices. (They make the big bucks not on the $150 prix fixe meal but on the 2,000% markups on alcohol, as I understand it.)

What's more, even if a restaurant did lower its prices, how would they tell anyone? Can you see Guy Savoy running coupons in What's On or Aureole taking an ad out in the R-J to announce such a thing? Once a restaurant has a reputation for its price point, it seems impossible -- and, long-term unwise -- to alter that perception.

No, the only realistic way for restaurants to cut costs is to dismiss some of its staff and, perhaps, close sections of its dining area. Hence, James and his colleagues are screwed.

That said, there is one other way. Caesars food headliner Bradley Ogden was on KNPR's State of Nevada last May with a shocking admission: He's taking the same money for smaller portions at some of his restaurants, although he seemed to avoid saying he does at at Caesars. "Rather than serving a 12 oz steak, you serve a 10 oz steak," Ogden says within the first four minutes of that show, linked to above. "For the same price?" Berns asks. "Yes, for the same price."

That strikes me as cheating. On the other hand, I'm not sure which is worse, people with money getting a little bit less food or working-class people losing their jobs. Sucks any way you, uh, slice it.

Bye, Bye, Mamma Mia!

And so the most successful Broadway musical ever to come to Las Vegas closed last night with an excellent final performance in which the actors clearly were trying to control their emotions and get the job done. I snapped these above from the 15th row and was amazed at how well they came out. (Read my "Mamma Mia" Mea Culpa here, btw.)

They didn't make any statements at the end of the production, much to the disappointment of many in the audience, but there were some moments during the show when it the actors and actresses behind the roles seemed to be winking at us about the occasion.

They did, however, have a party. Of course. This time, it was up in the HoB Foundation Room.




Here's a pic that a friend shot of me. I know it's unflattering, but I'm sick and bloated from all those chocolate Santas that were supposed to ward off this cold, so...


I really wasn't feeling like sticking around, but I loved the show so much and I really wanted to see Tina Walsh, the original Donna in the Vegas production who is now Madame Giry in Phantom. She made it over after her show was over. (To bone up on why I'm so mad about Tina, read this old LVW col.)

Here she is with Carol Linnea Johnson, who closed the show in the role that Meryl Streep ruined.


Here's Tina being chatted up by Robin Leach and then posing with Tim Tucker, one of our two guests on "The Strip" this Tuesday night.



And here's a few of the other actors. First, there's Victor Wallace, who opened the show in Vegas as Skye, the boyfriend of Sophie, and later returned to the cast as Sam, one of Sophie's possible dads. Yes, in a six-year span.


And here's Robin Baxter, who played Rosie, one of Donna's two friends. She's very, very funny.


But, alas, the party must come to an end. I was reminded of this when I saw this...


...in the Mandalay Bay parking garage.

Good luck to the former cast. And thanks for a great ride.

My 'Mamma Mia!' Mea Culpa

I've finally caught Miles' dreadful cold -- this is Day 3, which evidently is Hock Big Green Loogies Day -- but I'm going to soldier on tonight and get over to the finale of Mamma Mia! at Mandalay Bay.

In honor of that closure, allow me a Mamma Mia! mea culpa of sorts. At the media opening for the show in 2003, uberpublicist Dave Kirvin walked up behind me and said, gamely, "'One Hot Mamma'...question mark? How about 'One Hot Mamma'...exclamation point?" He was referring to this:


That's the headline for my Newsweek piece published six years ago next week about Vegas' first big swerve towards musical theater. You can read it by clicking here.

Kirvin, always genial, was needling me about the doubt engendered in that headline. I, of course, hid behind the fact that I don't write headlines, and the piece itself was a balanced -- and really short -- look at the fact that Mamma Mia! was going against established Vegas norms, that there was nothing in Vegas show history to say that it would.

Well, we all know now how that turned out. Mike Weatherford has an interesting tribute in today's Review-Journal in which he says that the ABBA-scored show was never a Cirque-like hit but marched on triumphantly week after week, month after month, emboldening all the other Broadway fare that arrived thereafter to fancy itself Strip material.

If I regret anything, it's that I failed to understand for a very long time the real emotional pull of what I referred to in that Newsweek piece as a "plot [that] is easy to ignore." The more times I've seen this show, the more numbers in it have affected me. "Knowing You, Knowing Me" reduced me to tears during the period after the end of my first marriage. "Slipping Through My Fingers" is poignant to me now as my Little Brother, once 6 and now somehow 18?!?, ships off to Air Force boot camp in three weeks. And "Winner Takes It All," before being utterly destroyed in the cinema by Meryl Streep, made me comprehend what a Sarah Brightman-caliber treasure Las Vegas had in Tina Walsh, the original Vegas Donna who now plays Madame Giry in "Phantom."

So, Mr. Kirvin and the rest of you, congratulations and, of course, thank you for the music. And to my readers, I do hope you'll join us on "The Strip" on Tuesday night at LVRocks.Com for a live interview with the only two members of the "Mamma Mia!' company who made it through the whole six-year run.

Ever Happen To You?

I'm always fascinated by what y'all see when you arrive at McCarran. Remember the time I noticed the odd image of the cow in a showgirl's headdress to tout the agribusiness of Nevada for reasons I still know not why?

Well, here's a new one I had forgotten was sitting on my camera from my most recent return:


In case it's hard to see, here's what it says:

Vegas waiters aren't being rude,
they're just saving water.
Remember, this is a desert.
Water is served by request only
at participating restaurants.

The billboard is from the Water Conservation Coalition, which is a fancy way of saying the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Vegas region's governmental agency responsible for dealing with water use issues. After rooting around, I found this site, which explains that the Nevada Restaurant Association is working with the SNWA to create the Water Upon Request program.

The site claims that more than 180 restaurants have signed up to participate and some menus even have stickers "that indicate the restaurant's support of conservation by serving water only upon request." They're supposed to look, I believe, like this to your right.

Now, I eat out. A lot. I've never seen such a thing. Have any of you? If so, where? 180 restaurants? Really?

I searched all over the Web and found such old newspaper references to this idea in the Las Vegas press that both writers are now deceased. One was a 2003 Las Vegas Sun column by the late Ruthe Deskin that claimed 120 local restaurants were doing this. Another was a piece in the Review-Journal in March 2004 by the late Rod Smith that didn't actually talk about this as a SNWA program but said that Boyd and Station casinos both has "water upon request" programs in most or all of their restaurants. I was at the TGIF's at Suncoast just tonight and they brought us water without our asking. That's owned by Boyd.

By the by, this order form allows restaurateurs to get menu stickers as well as coasters, pens and paycheck inserts (?!?). Has anyone out there who does NOT work for the Southern Nevada Water Authority ever seen any of these things?

My Golden Northern Nevada Trek

At long last, my big piece on Battle Mountain, Nev., (a.k.a. in my Facebook statuses while I traveled there in late November, "bumf%&#") is done and out in Friday's New York Times or found here at this link. I wanted to go to Battle Mountain, 215 miles east of Reno along I-80, because I was tired of writing about places where the economy is horrible. Battle Mountain is booming. Why?

Because of this:


That's an open-pit gold mine. The counties of Elko, Humboldt, Eureka and Lander (where Battle Mountain is) combine to be the fourth-biggest gold-producing region in the world. This pit is the Pipeline Mine owned by Barrick Mining (no relation to Barrick Gaming). Whereas I originally imagined that you see fun little gold nuggets being cracked out of the ground or from walls of tunnels at a gold mine, the fact is that all you really see is dirt. The gold is microscopic until they process it and enough of it gets together to be visible.

I know there are environmental problems with gold mining, but that was not the focus of my piece. My purpose was simply to speak to people in a corner of the world where the national economic misery is actually proving to be a good thing. When the economy is crap, the value of gold as a safe investment tends to rise. It's now at about $870 an ounce, which means the Pipeline Mine, producing 1 million ounces a year, is producing $870 million in gold. And that's just one pit.

To get the material to the processing plants, they have these $3 million trucks that can carry 400 tons, the largest haulers in the world.


They're incredibly large. Here's an illustration. Here's the tire without Steve:


...and here's the tire with Steve.


Try that again. Here it is without Steve:


...and with Steve!


Steve is 6 feet tall. Those tires are at least two Steves in diameter. The truck is at least 4.5 Steves. How many Steves tall is your house?

The Pipeline property is huge and the Barrick operation extensive. They have their own roads, obviously, for all their big trucks. I found these signs funny...


Apparently, the idea behind the half-mile limits is just to startle the drivers into paying attention to the signs. That's what the Barrick spokesman said, anyhow. Seems to me that after a while, they'd get used to it, but that's just me.

The Barrick guy made a big deal about how the reclaim the land and restore it to some sort of natural beauty -- hell, better than its original state -- after the mining is over. I left that out of the story because (a) it's not a story about the environmental impact of mining and (b) it sounded like a lot of happy talk. Still, as we were driving around, we first saw this...


...and got closer so we could take pictures like this...


I can't even remember what sort of creature that was. It wasn't a deer, but I'm stoopit and I can't recall what the Barrick guy said they are.

The town of Battle Mountain was kinda neat if you like that sorta thing. My piece is national-media vindication for the Battle Mountaineers to some extent because the last time they were noticed by the East Coast Media Elite Bastards, it was Washington Post Magazine writer Gene Weingarten with 7,000 words in 2001 about why this was, to his mind, the definitive Armpit of America. It's a funny piece and spawned three Armpit Festivals run by town boosters there (sponsored by Old Spice, natch) but is still a bit of a sore matter for many locals. Several asked if my photog, Brad Horn, and I were out to humiliate them again. I could honestly say that was not my aim.

Here's the postcard image of Battle Mountain, the Owl.


It's a casino, a diner and, oddly, a very aggressive pine nut vendor. There were signs everywhere advertising that you could buy bags of pine nuts for $20. I'm sorry, I forgot to shoot pix of it. Otherwise, Battle Mountain has a Super 8, a McDonald's and not a whole lot else. They're excited, though, as you can read in my piece, about a Family Dollar coming soon. Yay!

However, my photog Brad -- whose day job is with the Nevada Appeal in Carson City and whose site is here -- did a great job with a 12-photo slideshow of Battle Mountain you can find here.

I do have one more photo to share of my own from that trip. I stayed over in Reno on the second night of the trip and flew home the following day, but at Miles' recommendation I got a pretty inexpensive room at the Peppermill on that Sunday night. Check out these digs:


It cost $76 for that night. Look at the mirrors, the lights, the hot tub in the room. So what if the jets didn't work!

The Show is UP: Happy 2009!

Happy New Year, everyone. Enjoy! Hear the show by clicking on the date or right-click to download it and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here.

Jan. 1: ...And A Wynning New Year

We’ve walked through Encore with him and chatted him up about everything from that damaged Picasso to the exact curvature of his resort towers. So what’s left to talk about with Steve Wynn? Well, it’s Steve Wynn, so there’s always more. We finish playing our pre-Encore interview tonight with discussion of Wynn’s athletic prowess, his concerns about the economy and a little Gandhi chit-chat, too.

In Banter: Switch at Encore, the view from Capital Grille, Criss Angel on Larry King, Danny Gans’ Encore poster and free coffee at Silverton.

Links:

Find the site for Bagelmania here
Heidi Knapp Rinella’s Top 10 restaurants reviewed in 2008 is here
See the Danny Gans poster at Encore here
Read more about the Silverton’s Starbucks offering and other casino freebies here