Steve Wynn‘s been taking himself a mite too seriously of late, which makes me wonder whatever happened to this guy? At least the “hair helmet” look is a thing of the past. Sadly, so too is the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, which passed through many hands (including umpteen permutations of Hilton Gaming and, briefly, Harrah’s Entertainment) before falling into the dumpster that is Colony Capital.
Colony CEO Tom Barrack (successor to James Packer as Gaming’s Worst Investor) bought the erstwhile Nugget for a song, got way the hell upside down on his mortgage and there’s a serious likelihood that the A.C. Hilton could be forfeited to its creditors, just as Barrack’s Resorts Atlantic City was. One of Wynn’s strengths is that he doesn’t go cruising on Memory Lane but you have to wonder if his recent visit to Atlantic City — where he kicked the tires at Revel — was tinged with a certain bitterness at how low his old Boardwalk property has fallen.
(Thanks to Ian Sutton for the video clip.)
The new Stupak? Ming vases and cowb0y-themed slots? Prof. David G. Schwartz takes a stroll through the “comfortably anarchic” Treasure Island and muses upon the personal idiosyncrasies that Phil Ruffin has brought to the place (yet another Wynn legacy). Vegas needs an amiably eccentric casino owner and Ruffin bids fair to inherit the as-yet-unclaimed mantle of Bob Stupak. Like the quixotic Stupak, Ruffin is an operator in a town increasingly overrun by bean counters and property speculators.
(Schwartz, by the way, may be the most powerful journalist in town not named Jon Ralston. If the Las Vegas Business Press doesn’t like it that he’s writing for the Las Vegas Weekly or the latter sees his byline in rival Vegas Seven, that’s just too bad. Writers with that degree of carte blanche in Vegas are damn few and fortunate. Bravo, Dr. Schwartz!)
