Hospitality Design - July 2017 - 128

hd expo

recap

freak event, a contingent event: the death of my
father. Had my father been alive, there would
be no Mirage, Bellagio, Encore; somebody else
would've done it, of course. But the single event of
a premature passing of a young man changed the
course of my life. And Roger and I may have not
had the chance to do what we did.

What might you have done had he lived?
SW: The day before my father died, I was
accepted to Yale Law School, but I found out
about that when I was at the hospital at the
University of Minnesota where his surgery was
scheduled. I ended up going to Georgetown [law
school] for a semester or two. But I was running
the family bingo business. I decided I wanted to
be a developer, and all of a sudden, I was free
to do what I wanted, and by luck I ended up in
Las Vegas.
In terms of design, we got a blank sheet of
paper in front of us, it's the land under any one
of these hotels we mentioned. There you are,
you're sitting at a table. What are you going to
do? Here's the desert, the sky's the limit. Go
for it. There's the moment of truth. You can
copy somebody. You can say, 'I want to look like
Caesars Palace,' or you can say, 'What really
comes first?' And what really comes first in our
world is an idea. First, an idea; then, a hotel.
RT: One of those things about my success is that
I have always carefully listened to Steve. He has
this sense of what we need and want. I follow
that sense, I listened to the master. I've been
blessed with an ability to solve the problem
posed by those questions. He never lets me walk
in a room without a big idea.
SW: He's being humble. I have to say it because
he won't. DeRuyter O. Butler [executive vice
president of architecture at Wynn Design
& Development] and I sit with that piece of
paper, and we decide where the door is. We
try to visualize: What is the statement that it
makes when you're standing out in front of it?
We share that moment with him. Right away
he says, 'Oh I like that,' and I say, 'Now what
are we going to say to the people emotionally?'
We don't design to budget, we don't design to
material, we design to emotion. It's fun being an
editor when he's the writer. But that's our gig,
that's how we do it.
RT: In our industry, it amazes my colleagues
that I have the access to Steve that I have, that
I meet with him regularly, that I call him when

128

July 2017 hospitalitydesign.com

The spacious Fountain suite in the Wynn Palace Cotai in Macau

Encore Las Vegas' red-hued reception area
I have a problem or a question. But Steve is as
involved in the design as I am.
My favorite moment of an entire project is
before everybody else gets to go in. It's pristine,
there's no one in it, it's brand new and sparkly. It's
my room, and I get to go into it [with] my team,
who are an extraordinary group of humans at
Wynn. This really takes a cast of hundreds. You
have to have great talent in every area or you're
just a guy out there trying to make something
pretty. They all have to care, they all have to want
to make it the very best thing they can make
it. And it's at that moment I get to see that they
succeeded.
SW: A good, strong idea is something everyone

can get their arms around. And a simple core
idea that drives a project or a company is
something everybody can understand. The job of
the boss is to have the idea that is fundamental,
strong enough, and simple enough that other
people will say to themselves, 'That's right, that's
good enough for me. I know that to be true.'
When you have that, then everybody's creative
juices flow, but they flow in the same direction.
We enjoy that cultural advantage in our family at
Wynn Resorts.

This interview has been edited for space and
clarity. The full conversation is available at
hospitalitydesign.com.
http://www.hospitalitydesign.com http://www.hospitalitydesign.com
Hospitality Design - July 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - July 2017
