It's definitely not an April Fool's joke, since it was made on April 6. If anything, Wynn was out to steal the thunder of that night's opening of T-Mobile Arena and, judging by the press coverage he got, he succeeded. Wynn has talked about re-purposing the golf course land seemingly ever since it opened. He's also pined for a convention center, which will be one of the integral components of Wynn Paradise Park, the $1.6 billion project. It will, in fact, have every prerequisite for a Strip resort, although the casino will be small. As Wynn said of his anticipated customers, "I don't give a damn if they put a nickel in a slot machine. I want them to pay my admission, I want them to stay in my rooms — I want them to drink my booze and eat our food."
In addition to 260,000 feet of meeting space, Wynn Paradise will have a 1,000-room hotel, fronting a lagoon that will be one mile in circumference and cover 38 acres. That's 30 football fields. (The golf course sprawls across 130 acres, and links and sand traps can be seen in Wynn Resorts' official rendering of Paradise Park.) Development of the lake has been outsourced to Miami-based Crystal Lagoons, which pointedly says that its hundreds of man-made lakes need "30 times less water than a typical 18-hole golf course and 50 percent less water than a park of the same size."
The ultimate fate of the remnants of the course – which will close this autumn -- are undetermined, pending discussion by the Wynn Resorts board. A conflicting source, however, reports that the course will be truncated to nine holes. Stay tuned for further developments on this front... The golf course makes 'only' $5 million a year. Paradise Park could generate up to $400 million a year (a 25 percent return on investment), according to Telsey Advisory Group analyst David Katz. Judging by those numbers, keeping the course in operation, especially in cut-down form, may not be a very high priority for Wynn Resorts' board members.
Steve Wynn has said the Paradise Park development will "reinvent Las Vegas" and be "just like Disney." In addition to free ice cream and nightly fireworks, the lagoon – which will have a 120-foot-long island in the middle that will double as the launching pad for the pyrotechnics – will enable guests to windsurf, water-ski, paddle-board, or go parasailing. However, all those activities (and the ice cream) come with an admission price, ranging from $20 to $50. Hotel guests will presumably be on the lower end of that price scale. Steve Wynn was overheard saying, "People who stay in the hotel are going to be charged a new service fee." As with casino parking, there's less and less that's truly free in Las Vegas anymore.
"Wynn management also called out the importance [and] value of water rights in Las Vegas, as the only other property that has comparable water rights to Wynn is Bellagio, essentially limiting any competition. Bellagio’s water rights are tied to its fountains," opined JP Morgan gaming analyst Joseph Greff. He thinks the extra 1,000 rooms added by the hotel would be absorbed by the Vegas market in three years.
Restaurateurs for Paradise Park haven't been announced yet. However, the hotel guest rooms will be like those at Encore, with the additional amenity of a balcony. There will presumably be some on-property retail, although Wynn Resorts is putting most of its emphasis currently on Wynn Plaza, a 75,500-square-foot shopping mall that will take the place of the Ferrari dealership that used to sit near the junction of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore.
Wynn Resorts won't be rushing into Paradise Park: A mid-2017 construction start is anticipated, although conflicting reports have the company starting on it as soon as the golf course closes. In the meantime, the company's more than busy with Wynn Plaza, Wynn Boston Harbor (formerly Wynn Everett), and Wynn Paradise Cotai, a $4.1 billion megaresort in Macao. (Paradise Park could, however, beat Wynn Boston Harbor to the market because the latter has a number of obstacles to clear, including remediation of its brownfield site.)
As for golfers, if they've got a spare $500, they should play those Tom Fazio-designed links at Wynn while they still can. Wynn Paradise Park is no joke. It's meant to be fun but Steve Wynn is dead serious about building it. As he told investors, "This is the most fun project in my 45 years. Somebody take the other side, tell me what's wrong with this idea? We've all drunk the Kool-Aid." Presumably that includes the board of directors, which still has to approve the project but is unlikely to buck the wishes of Las Vegas' reigning casino genius.
