Stuff I Found Cleaning Out My Vegas Office

As you may have read in my acclaimed love-letter essay to Las Vegas and my life there in Las Vegas Weekly, I spent my final days in Nevada packing up a house and office stuffed to the gills with historical and peculiar Vegas stuff. There was a shelf in my office closet with at least a six-foot pile of press materials that proved akin to an archeological survey, newest to oldest layered upon one another like a geological formation.

The stuff I unearthed was Vegas in its most optimistic, boosterish form, such as the above document outlining the expansion plans for the airport. I also found this promo for CityCenter...

...which is technically true because, uh, the future always begins now. Duh.

I loved this relic...

...and made sure to put this piece of Frontier glass in a safe place.

I found this magnet from the late, great Dive at the Fashion Show Mall, where I used to take my little brother all the time for fries and to peer through the periscope that offered a Strip view. It was just last month that a listener of the podcast asked me something about this place:

I found these artifacts of the earlier days of our podcast...

We used to send CDs and thank-you notes to all our guests, and once we got this back from the amazing Paula Poundstone:

Here was one of the table centerpieces from the final performance of Siegfried & Roy, a fundraiser for Keep Memory Alive, the foundation that funds the Lou Ruvo Cleveland Clinic for Brain Health in Vegas:

I found it rather unsettling that I did not and still don't remember that I had actually been a patient in 2002 of the most infamous endoscopy doctor in America:

At the same time, I find it awesome beyond words that I found this, which my old R-J friend Natalie Patton sent to me in 2000 when I was about to depart for China:

And I have no idea whatsoever how I came into possession of this rather invaluable bit of family history...

...but I'm so glad I have it.

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?

Wynn Pays $75K To Demo Frontier Sign

I just came in from my tour of Encore with Steve Wynn and I much, much, much more on that later, once I sort out what won't fit in my Wynn profile slated to run on Monday, opening day, in a national publication. But I do have this intriguing bit of news to break: Wynn went in halfsies with the ELAD gang on the $150,000 cost to demolish the old Frontier sign in time for Monday's Encore opening. He also said he bought 200 trees from Nellis Air Force Base and is having them moved and planted in a line along the sidewalk in front of the empty lot where the Frontier used to be. Don't ask me why Nellis was having a tree sale, but I hope the guvmint got a good price. Wynn couldn't remember what he paid.

Why would he have to do all that? Well, Wynn is big on controlling what his guests can see, at least on the lower levels at the restaurants and such. That's what the 180-foot mountain outside the Wynn Las Vegas was all about. "A carnival is great," Wynn once told me, "but you only get to control your section of the midway." Burned in his memory remains a birthday party he once had at Picasso at Bellagio after the new Aladdin (now Planet Ho) was opened across the street. "That damn sign was blinking and blinking in the window and there wasn't a thing we could do about it," he told me in 2005.

But your question probably really was, "Why would he have to pay to remove the sign on someone else's land?" Well, he didn't say it in so many words, but clearly the Elad people are in no hurry to remove it or do much of anything on the land for which they paid $35 million from Phil Ruffin last year. They imploded the Frontier in November and spent gobs of money in court successfully defending their rights to use the Plaza name for the proposed $5 billion resort modeled after the Plaza New York which they own, but the project's timetable continues to be pushed back thanks to the lousy credit market.

So Wynn decided to take control and get 'er done. His hatred for the Frontier of old and anything associated with it is legendary; he famously once told me it was "the single biggest toilet in Las Vegas" and that having empty space across the street was better than that thing. Yet today he also found satisfaction and poetry in being the one to take it down since he was part of the group of owners of the property that first erected the sign as it looks now in 1967. Here's an extensive history of the sign from UNLV's Center for Gaming Research. "I put that sign up and I tore it down," Wynn chuckled today.

The sign, though, was not preserved for the Neon Museum. Wynn said it fell apart in the tear-down. That's sad.

Of course, Wynn's moved on. While I was away, the Encore marquee sign was unveiled. It's here:

It's cute. Nothing terribly flashy. But at least it's not this:


That is so strangely tacky for the otherwise picture-perfect CityCenter folks. It's a beautiful, elegant building. Why does it need its name slapped on it? There had to be a more attractive way to do this.

[UPDATE: Since posting this, it's been noted that the Sun did this piece on the Frontier sign last week. I've checked, though; nobody's reported the dollar figures, the 200 trees or the part about the sign not going to the Neon Museum.]

Wynn Offers Elad "Suggestions" On Plaza Design

OK... here's the first fun bit from my Wynn chat Wednesday night. Apparently, Wynn's not too fond of the horrible mock-up of the future Plaza Hotel and is trying to be "helpful." (The rendering is pictured here, courtesy of VegasTodayandTomorrow.Com.)

Friess: Have you seen the renderings of what the Elad Group wants to put there?

Wynn: Yes, but they're in the earliest stages of it. They were all over here today with their drasings reviewing traffic lights and driveways. ... Drawings will change, concepts will change, we're not near done with the Frontier yet.

Friess: Did you make any suggestions about how it will look because it doesn't look very interesting.

Wynn: Mmhmm. I did, yes. To show the drawings was a little bit too soon. The fact of the matter is the demolition was enough. You don't have to show everybody your drawings. Besides, you can't get paid for it. They're not a public company, there's no reason to show people an unfinished product in my opinion. But they're smart guys, these fellows.

How neighborly! I wonder how Adelson feels that the most prominent Israeli business interest in Vegas is cozying up to Steve Wynn!

FRONTIER IMPLOSION VIDEO #1

We have a bunch of other footage including me chatting with RateVegas.Com's Hunter Hillegas before and after, but the files don't come from my Sony camcorder to my Macbook Pro intact, so I set this 3-minute set to a thumping remix of "Time To Say Goodbye." Enjoy and check back for more soon.

Inside the FRONTIER Implosion, Part III

OK! Here's my Sunday photo trove from the New Frontier. I love the one above most, obviously, but there are lots of fun ones below including a drawer of the casino cage, some casino and room shots and the fireworks stuff out by what was the pool. Enjoy!

Inside the FRONTIER Implosion, Part II

OK - I crawled all over the Frontier today and will post more pix probably Monday morning. In the meantime, though, I also just posted a special BONUS edition of "The Strip" in which implosion dude Mark Loizeaux explains in depth the details of how this implosion will work, what's next in Vegas -- the Island Tower at the Trop, in January or February! -- and what sort of $$$ is in the implosion biz. He also notes that the Elad Group, owners of the site and future Plaza Hotel, are having the implosion piped via closed circuit TV to their investors in Israel. At least they get to watch at a less ungodly hour, huh?

Hear that chat here or right-click here to download the conversation and hear it whenever you wish.

I've got a piece on the Loizeaux family running in the New York Times on Monday that you can read here. Plus, we'll be on site early Tues to do some video.

Inside the FRONTIER Implosion, Part I

Today I got to walk around the New Frontier site and interview the owners of Controlled Demolition Inc., the Loizeauxes. This is the Baltimore family behind every implosion on the Strip since the Dunes. I'm working on a feature on them for a major national paper to run Monday in advance of the implosion early Tuesday. The sun was setting fast when I was done with my interviews, so I'm going back Sunday to shoot some inside pix. And yes, I grabbed some trinkets for keepsakes -- some pieces of glass, some old ticket-in tickets and the Associate Handbook pictured below from the floor of the vacant space.

I'm obviously very proud of the above image and its cool Wynn reflection. Below are more shots, including one of the Loizeaux family threading dynamite to stuff into pillars in the building. One surprise is how intact so much of the building is -- why didn't they take down the Frontier lettering and auction it off or give it to the Neon Museum? And the pool area still has all its grown palm trees; I would think there would be a market for those, too.

Loizeaux explained that the contractor on this job is not the same as the Stardust's and does not have the same eco-friendly approach. There are tax breaks and other perks to stripping buildings of their wood and carpet and such and recycling most of the building materials. Not this crowd. Oh well. Enjoy the pix and, if other sites or bloggers want to use them, go for it but give us credit.

BREAKING: Frontier Implosion planned for Nov. 13

I interviewed Steve Wynn last week for a few of my publications. But this piece of news has no such home and could be scooped soon, so I blog it. The owners of the property stay across the street at Wynn Las Vegas when they're in town, and they tell him stuff. And Wynn volunteered to me that the implosion will be October 13.

I'm glad I checked around, though. Wynn is slightly mistaken. I can now tell you without hesitation that Wynn was off by a month. The Frontier is scheduled to disappear on November 13, not October 13.

Aside from the unimpeachable nature of the sources who clarified the date for me, there are other reasons why Nov. 13 rings true. For one, Oct. 13 is a Saturday, and there's no way Clark County would allow that. But Nov. 13 is a Tuesday, the same day of the week as the Stardust implosion. And I remember when working on the Stardust implosion that county officials had said they demand implosions take place early Tuesday mornings because that's the lightest traffic time of the whole week on the Strip.

No word yet whether the implosion will be turned into a spectacle, although Phil Grucci, the owner of the fireworks company that handles all the big shows, has been contacted and discussions are underway. Grucci, for the record, is among the sources who confirmed the date for me and said he had not heard of a specific date as yet.

We're Right - Again!

Last weekend we broke the news that the Frontier would close on July 15. It was re-reported in various places, but in some cases it was treated as a rumor as opposed to a well-sourced report.

Alas, our 100 percent batting average remains intact. According to the Classic Las Vegas blog, readers have told them that the following signage has sprouted all over the doomed property:

"REDEMPTION OF ALL NEW FRONTIER CHIPS & TOKENS

Due to the closure of the New Frontier Hotel & Casino, all New Frontier chips and tokens will be redeemable at the New Frontier's main casino cage 24 hours a day up to July 15, 2007.

Thereafter, all chips and tokens will be redeemed exclusively at the Riviera Hotel Casino's main cage 24 hours a day through October 10, 2007. "

So there.

I'm still at the VIP Lounge at the Rio. The prime rib was terrific, the chocolate chip cookies divine. Doyle Brunson is now at a table nearby chowing down.

Is the Sahara next?

I just posted a new, special edition of The Strip, a brief interview with Controlled Demolition Inc owner Mark Loizeaux, who also knocked down everything from the Dunes in 1993 to the Wynn parking garage last week.

He has some interesting comments about what's next and what he's been asked to assess.

Listen to it HERE.

Funny, because the voting on TheStripPodcast.Com poll this week so far indicates most folks think the Frontier's next to go. He doesn't even mention it, I don 't think.

Stay tuned for Stardust implosion video.