Photo Image665
Montage include: Jan Laverty Jones,
Las Vegas Mayor, Troy Cory, president of
China Expo 2000AD, Consul General, Wang
Xue Xian, Ambassador of the People's
Republic of China, Arnie Adamson, Las
Vegas City Councilman, Wayne Gan, Bill
Westerman, Valerie Milano. Photos taken
in 1994 - 1995: Las Vegas City Council
chambers, Sands and Riviera
Hotels.
1.
Feature Story / 47th
Week 2005 /
"It is the destiny of Las
Vegas to be discovered over and over again," told
Troy Cory -- to Las Vegas reporter, Pete Allman a
few weeks ago. SEE
Cory Speaks on Historical Aspects of Disney - Pete
Allman
•
•
"The history of Las Vegas
can be told by the many discoveries made by almost
anyone of the millions of people, who are
monetarily linked to this magical town. My favorite
story is the one about how Las Vegas, and the
Jockey Club, now sitting between the Monte Carlo
and Bellagio hotels, was first discovered by
mainland China.
•
•
When the high ranking
delegation from communist China first saw the
property in 1994, they analogized the property as a
Forbidden City themed complex."
•
•
They loved the hospitality
at the Riviera Hotel. Their host, CEO, Bill
Westerman, even allowed the delegation to carry
their own luggage to their rooms, because of
China's ban on tipping.
•
•
For three days, Westerman
highlighted their China Expo 2000 on the marquee
with their "Splash" stage show. The stage show and
their stay at the hotel was later featured on CCTV
during the Hong Kong festivities in 1997".
CLICK
TO SEE A SEGMENT OF THE HONG KONG TRIAD - JOCKEY
CLUB
SEGMENT. •
•
Any doubts that China had
about Las Vegas and Macau of becoming mainstream
cultural gaming centers -- have all been erased.
•
• "I'm
proud to report 11 years later," says Troy, "that
the same members of the China delegation I brought
to the City in 1994, are now doing business with
some of the same Las Vegas folks I introduced them
to at the Las Vegas City Hall, and various hotels
on the strip".
• •
Steve Wynn's namesake located in Macau,
China -- is a 16-acre site, 600 rooms and 100,000
square feet of gambling space complex. Former
Lieutenant Governor of Nevada, Dr. Lonnie
Hammargren, M.D., was a big help in personally
introducing the Chinese Firewire and VATs Dial Tone
system, at the Vegas CES show.
•
•
Wynn, for his part, revolutionized the
casino industry in 1989, when, financed by Michael
Milken's junk bonds, he opened the spectacular
Mirage and proved that gambling resorts could make
as much money, or more, from the shows, shops,
restaurants and meeting rooms as from the slots and
the card tables. Five years ago, Wynn suffered a
humiliating blow when he was forced to sell his
Strip holdings to Kerkorian. Now he's back, with
the Wynn Las Vegas. Only in the corporate-bloated
America of 2005 could his $2.7-billion property be
seen as David to Kerkorian's
Goliath.
• •
The city that best embodies the nation's
corporate ethos, "what comes here, stays here," --
evaporated this year when the town was neatly
chopped (as they say at the poker tables) --
between two behemoth corporations: Kirk Kerkorian's
MGM Mirage acquired the Mandalay Resort Group and
Harrah's Entertainment bought out Caesars
Entertainment, thus becoming the largest casino
company in the world.
• •
Even the two gambling titans are now ready
and able to admit owning almost every major
property on the fabled Strip, the main attraction
in a city that draws nearly 40 million tourists a
year. The notable exceptions, Steve Wynn's Wynn Las
Vegas and Sheldon Adelson's Venetian, are
themselves part of multibillion-dollar publicly
traded corporations. Tax receipts from the newly
aggregated MGM Mirage and Harrah's alone now
account for almost a third of Nevada's general fund
revenue.
•
•
As the desert city celebrates its centennial
this year, it has transformed itself from being
"just" a Sin City run by gun-toting mobsters to a
New Las Vegas run by risk-averse Bluetooth-equipped
MBAs. "Consolidation was the way of capitalism, and
the gaming industry practiced that philosophy at
hyperspeed," writes John L. Smith in "Sharks in the
Desert: The Founding Fathers and Current Kings of
Las Vegas."
Part
02 SHORT
HISTORY •
•
The name "Las Vegas" was
tagged by the Spanish explorers who first
discovered it in 1829. They first called it "the
Meadows" - but changed the name when they
discovered the lush meadows which were fed by a
natural water reserve found in the midst of the
desert. In 1843, Captain John C. Fremont, having
heard rumors of a great river, entered the Great
Basin to conduct the first official mapping of what
would become Nevada. "A great part of it," he wrote
in his journal, "is absolutely new to geographical,
botanical and geological science." Even today, many
of the plants indigenous to Nevada are rare and
cannot be found anywhere else in the
world.
•
•
In the mid-1800s, a
migration of Mormons had replaced the original
Spanish residents, but by 1857 they too were gone.
It was in 1902 that Las Vegas was again in a state
of discovery. Senator William Clark planned to
build a railroad line between Los Angeles and Salt
Lake City, and he needed the artesian springs of
Las Vegas to do it. In 1905, he auctioned his large
land parcels, netting $265,000. Those who bought
those townsites lots were never sorry. 25 years
later the Federal Government purchased the
townsites to build the Dam named after President
Hoover.
•
•
An engineering marvel, this 726.4 foot high
concrete dam, can store two years' average flow of
the Colorado River (and which still supplies the
three western states of California, Arizona and
Nevada with some of their power), was responsible
for pulling Las Vegas out of the Great Depression.
It took 5,000 men over a five-year period to build
its 70-story high wall.
•
•
Then, in 1931, the revenue starved state
legislature voted to exchange dollars for chips,
they establish legalized casino gambling! Of course
Clark, (Clark County was named after him) - then
sold some more of his parcels to the locals for up
to $500.
•
•
Notwithstanding, the Hoover Dam, the biggest
event in the history of Las Vegas was the building
of the Pink Flamingo by Bugsy Siegel and Meyer
Lansky in 1946, on one of Clark's parcels. The
money was laundered into Nevada from the profits
earned on bootlegging operations in the unlamented
era of Prohibition and from the sale of counterfeit
rationing stamps during World War II.
•
•
Although the Pink Flamingo was not the first
of its kind to be built in the city, it was
certainly the forerunner of the modern day
luxuriously hotel/casinos for which Las Vegas is
now famous. By the late 1950s, Las Vegas had a well
established image of success and glamour. World
famous entertainers such as Frank Sinatra and the
other members of his "Rat Pack" (Joey Bishop, Sammy
Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Dean Martin) made
their Las Vegas shows legendary. Las Vegas became
"the Entertainment Capital of the World," a name by
which it is still known.
•
•
In 1966, a new legend arrived in town --
Howard Hughes! Arriving suddenly in the middle of
the night, the mysterious millionaire took up
residence at the Desert Inn, which became his home
for the next four years. During his stay, he bought
up a great many hotel/casinos on the Strip, as well
as a television station, so that he could watch his
favorite movies.
03.
The Jockey Club. •
•
What was once the old Dunes
Golf Course, running, (north/south from Flamingo to
Tropicana and east/west from Las Vegas Blvd. to the
Freeway) -- was sold in 1956 to resolve a
delinquent water bill in the amount of $356.00.
•
•
As strange as it seems,
today, the old Dunes golf course includes the
Jockey Club, and the billion-dollar Bellagio, Monte
Carlo and the New York New York hotels and casinos.
•
•
The ownership of the Jockey
Club's 355 condos, are still owned by only a small
group of individuals and corporate trusts. Most of
the revenue to operate the hotel, comes from the
annual fees paid by "timeshare" holders, and
visitors looking for a one or two bedroom suite for
a short stay. Two-Thirds of the condo units, are
owned by a Jockey Club Alliance
trust.
•
•
"What's being sold now,
around and about the Jockey Club property? More
timeshares?"
•
•
"No", says a spokesman for
the Jockey Club Alliance Group, and a few of those
people familiar with the future development of the
Jockey Club
property.
•
•
Foremost amongst its plans,
is its own 'VATs WiFi TV' wireless VoIP system for
inhouse, on-line gambling, and QoS to its users.
The little mobile wireless telephone satellite WiFi
system, was initiated in 1996 -- and is now being
used over the VoIP on a scale never before seen in
history. MORE
ABOUT VOIP, VATS AND
WIFI
•
•
"You can gamble on whatever
dream you can afford, a pay-as-you-play, or as we
call it around here, a living to work paradise."
Las Vegas enables you not only to gaze upon your
dream, but also allows you to sleep in its bed --
and have sex with it, says
Allman."
•
•
Authentic or not, a dream
hardly matters in Vegas, it's all part of reality.
Things move too fast for anyone to figure such
things out. The 100-year-old city is sprouting a
bumper crop of high-rise luxury condos.
•
•
A few blocks from the Jockey
Club complex, a second strip area is emerging, on
which actor George Clooney and his partners aim to
build a $3-billion resort with an upscale dress
code, no less. And Kerkorian's MGM Mirage has
announced the ultimate breakdown of the
public-private barrier: a "Project CityCenter" that
will construct a private metropolis inside the
existing urban core.
•
•
To be built on 66 acres, the
CityCenter will offer half a million square feet of
shops, an entrance on the scale of Fifth Avenue, a
4,000-room resort casino and 1,500 luxury
residences for those who can afford to live in the
city within the city, and who will probably never
once ask themselves which one is
authentic.
•
•
Each coming year, Las Vegas
will continue to be discovered by another crop of
millions of people coming to sample the fabulous
night life, striking landscape and spectacular
attractions. All that made Las Vegas what it is --
water in the desert, Hoover Dam, luxurious
hotel/casinos with their magnificent stage shows --
is still here, waiting to be discovered by you and
your family!
