ELAINE WYNN

Elaine was interviewed April 19, 2000.

With the opening of the Mirage, there was a great deal of skepticism, but also curiosity.  Could the town sustain a place that had 3,000 hotel rooms in a much bigger footprint with multiple attractions?  Everyone predicted that it wouldn=t make it because the daily nut was too high.  The rest is history.  It was clearly established and acknowledged that yes, that Las Vegas could sustain this kind of thing.  It began the next wave of commercial development.

During that time, of course, the thing that Las Vegas was selling was growth.  People started to come here because of the jobs.  California, naturally, was going through a decline and recession that had earlier hurt the East.  So people were coming here in the same fashion that they are today.  With that and the evolution of the Hughes Company into real estate and master-planned communities, the Greenspun family and their master-planned communities, the future of Las Vegas was taking a different shape.  It was merging the approach of Arizona, in terms of retirement communities, plus more commercial development to accommodate the growth that was being stimulated by these new resorts.

The challenge to the growing community was infrastructure and typical social issues.  The University was perceived as playing a critical role during that period.  It was finally defined as an urban university that had a true mission in this community, not only because of the hospitality industry and the hotel school, but the business school and other things that now had to be used to prepare this community.  We began to experience the traffic, the increased need for schools, and the social problems that had to do with transiency, and single parents who needed help.  They=d fall through the cracks, maybe became gamblers, had to go on welfare, needed job training.  Senior citizens came demanding all of the services but not paying their proportionate share of taxes.  This has led us to where we are today: a similar situation, only magnified.  The governor is faced now with trying to figure out how to reconstruct our tax system to that we can more properly pay for the future without using an antiquated system that relies far too much on gaming.

            In terms of art and culture, we haven=t come very far and that=s unfortunate.  It=s a service-oriented industry. We have the lowest college graduation rate of our population of almost any state in the country. Because there=s not a particularly high level of education, the demand for art and culture is not terribly high in rank and file workers here.  Nevertheless, when we opened the Bellagio Gallery, the response was overwhelming.  We had more than 600,000 people go through the gallery this last year.  Now of course a good number of them are tourists and our guests, but a lot of local people have as well.