Question of the Day - 29 May 2024

Happy to. Thanks for asking. But it won't be "slam bam"; giving the Mirage its due will take three full QoDs. Here we go.

The opening of the Mirage in November 1989 launched the biggest hotel-building boom in history and not just in Las Vegas, but the world. The first hotel-casino to be built from scratch since 1973 (the original MGM Grand, then Bally's, now Horseshoe, which cost a mere $120 million to build), the Mirage was the Big Bang in southern Nevada. All of Las Vegas' roaring history combined, up until that point in time, hadn't made a noise louder than the one that the Mirage detonated.

The fact that many pundits believed (and all the competition hoped) that Steve Wynn was meshuggah to build the Mirage is one of the great quirks of the city's recent past. More than a few analysts, observers, and second guessers were convinced that Wynn was committing financial suicide by building such a huge and expensive resort-casino. He would have to service more than a half-billion dollars in debt, junk-bond debt at high interest rates at that. Story after story appeared asserting that the Mirage was destined to be one of the most monumental failures in the history of civilization. It would never be started. It would never be completed. It would never open. It would never turn a profit. 

But Wynn and his team knew what they were doing. They designed a magnificent property, even by today's standards. They offered a whole new product in terms of theming, spectacle, entertainment, and luxury, the gamut of which has come to epitomize the New Las Vegas. Thus, even though the financing was dicey (when it opened, the Mirage had expenses of $1 million a day and $25 million in working capital -- in other words, three weeks of reserve funds), what Wynn called "the big jury" returned a quick verdict: The Mirage netted $40 million, $1.29 million a day, in December, its first full month of operation in what is traditionally the slowest month of the year in Las Vegas, in the casino alone. 

No one had ever seen anything like the Mirage -- three wings, 29 stories, 3,049 rooms. First off, it was huge; only the Las Vegas Hilton had more rooms at the time. Second, it was spectacular. The show-stopping spectacle of the volcano out front, with just a sidewalk between it and the Strip, took place atop a five-story manmade mountain for three minutes every half-hour after dark, in which steam escaped on cue with a serpentine hiss, flames licked at the night, water in the reflecting pool began to roil, "lava" magically flowed, and pedestrian traffic, along with some vehicles, ground to a halt. A thousand palm trees, grown elsewhere, uprooted, and transplanted, shaded the scene.

A lot of people walked inside the casino after the eruption.

The three-million-square-foot building was fronted by an atrium with a 100-foot-high glass dome sheltering a tropical rainforest. A 57-foot-long aquarium backed the front desk, seven-inch acrylic walls holding in 20,000 gallons of water, pygmy sharks warning credit customers to pay off their markers. So did the white Bengali lions and tigers costarring in the eye-popping Siegfried & Roy show and residing in a showbiz habitat on the Caesars side of the building. 

The pool area attracted some of the most beautiful swim-suited bodies in town at any given time and connected to the Secret Garden, which featured a million-gallon saltwater captive-dolphin habitat. 

All completely unheard of and unseen previously in "fabulous" Las Vegas. 

It was all made possible by the $630 million price tag, financed by none other than Drexel Burnham Lambert and its high-interest junk bonds, courtesy of Michael Milken.

Drexel was forced into bankruptcy a year later after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued the company for insider trading, stock manipulation, fraud, junk-bond abuses, and more, every bit of which involved Milken and his high-yield securities department. Milken copped a plea, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $600 million, had his time cut to two years after ratting out former colleagues, and was pardoned by Trump in 2020.

But by the time all that started to transpire, the Mirage was built, open, and earning its nut: $1 million a day, absolutely unprecedented in Las Vegas or anywhere for that matter.

Everything about the Mirage glowed with Steve Wynn's personal charisma and vision, including the profits.

Tomorrow: The Heyday