Celebrity Gossip From Las Vegas With Robin Leach | Luxe Life Digest

Vegas is apparently on the verge of an even bigger explosion -- even larger than the one we thought we were just topping out on. The news comes as our state Gaming Control Board announced new record numbers for February -- 2.98 million visitors. According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, February's numbers bring the total to more than 6.15 million guests for the first two months of the year  -- a 2.6% jump from last year, which ended with a record annual total of nearly 38.6 million visitors.

For revenue, the $1.03 billion win for the state’s 342 casinos was a 12.8% increase over last February which was also the best on record back then and the first ever $1 billion month win. What’s fascinating in the figures is that Nevada’s 97 poker rooms were up an amazing 38.8% over the previous 12-month period collecting $145.8 million.

Citywide occupancy climbed to better than 90% with average daily rates for 131,617 guest rooms at more than $120, up 18 percent from a year ago even with higher prices and an increase in available rooms.

The New Breed
Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta III, the hotel honchos of the new Red Rock Resort -- which will open on Tuesday, April 18 -- have just told financial bankers and analysts "The outlook is very robust. Thirty thousand new homes will be built each year and another 5,000-8,000 people will move in each month. We’re also predicting a 7% growth here in personal income each year and 60,000 new jobs will open up." Following right on the heels of our Red Rock advance peek in Luxe Life last week, the executive management had to tell Wall Street investors how it would combine local customer loyalty and at the same time, in a departure from its 30-year-history, simultaneously draw out of town visitors to a high-end resort destination. The resort will feature 1,000-penny slot machines amongst
the 3200 slot machines on the giant casino floor while the outdoor "adventure" spa will feature hiking, fishing, mountain climbing in addition to health and wellness classes.

I took a private tour of the property with its President Scott Kreeger and it is verwhelmingly gorgeous. It’s the first casino I’ve been in where floor to ceiling windows let in the natural light- you can see views of the Strip and the famed Red Rock Mountain range in both directions east and west. The first casino I’ve been in where you don’t have to walk through slot machines and table games to check in, get to your room or use the spa! First Vegas hotel with three separate entrances -- all with valet parking!

Luxe Life will give you the full advance look right here early Tuesday morning several hours in advance of opening night ceremonies and fireworks. But I’m already in awe of the superb
indoor-outdoor adventure spa, wondrous pool gardens where all seven restaurants have overlooking outdoor patios and the 3-million-plus crystals the owners, Lorenzo and Frank, have installed inthe colossal chandeliers dotted throughout the property. Check out the circular one in the Lucky Bar where ice-cubes actually slide-down inside the tube right into the bartender service spots. The billion-dollar off-strip property is a wow masterpiece with its contemporary desert-modern architecture and the reds, biscuit earth-tone color scheme accurately reflects off the adjoining mountains.

The building boom just doesn’t stop there. Now comes word that the Station Casino group headed by the Fertitta brothers -- their father founded the now 15-strong casino empire 30-years ago with just $500 when he was a bellman at the Tropicana -- will break ground on a new North Las Vegas casino project next year to open in 2008. New Frontier owner Phil Ruffin says he’ll demolish his Strip property almost opposite the new Wynn and build a newer larger $2-billion property, The Montreux -- named after the Swiss resort with its famed annual jazz festival. He plans to break ground next year and reopen by 2010, complete with the American version of the Montreux Jazz Festival plus the Las Vegas Eye, a giant Ferris wheel 450 feet high modeled after the famed London Eye.

And my friend, superstar celebrity chef, Charlie Palmer will open a $400-million 35 story boutique non-gaming condo-hotel to replace the Golden Palm Motel just off the Strip a little west of NYNY. He told me he’ll break ground this year and open mid 2008 and will be similar to the Hotel Healdsburg he built  three years-ago in California wine country. Charlie, who owns restaurants in Mandalay Bay, the Four Seasons and Turnberry Towers as part of his 11-restaurant coast-to-coast empire, is also about to open the first of a line of high-end grocery stores in Vegas where shoppers are met by a maitre d’ before they are unveiled in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. VIPs like Tiger Woods and Pierce Brosnan are big fans of the celebrity chef hotelier and have promised support for the project which will feature a tranquil pool area, a cigar bar, his first sushi bar and personalized in-suite sommelier service.

I talked with Vegas pioneer and trendsetter Steve Wynn about all these new projects and new operators. He’s about to start a 2,054 additional room expansion in his 2nd Strip tower, Encore at the new Wynn and told me, "Our town is maturing yet again with another evolution. The next new generation has begun arriving. They are finding it’s better to build here with grand scale concepts than it is in New York or Miami or in Santa Monica. It will all change Vegas yet again- and make it even bigger, better and more exciting. You can’t tell me of any other city in the world like this one. The young real-estate developers and hoteliers are yet again giving Vegas another incredible vote of confidence. This is where the action will be right through 2020 with extraordinary expansion."

The original crown jewel of the Strip, Caesars Palace is also planning an expansion and upgrading with a whopping $1 billion price tag. Included is a super sports arena so that its parent company Harrah’s doesn’t have to export world championship boxing out of the house – and a 2nd tower similar to the super luxury Augustus that opened just a couple of months ago and will house the prestigious Guy Savoy restaurant from Paris shortly. Harrah’s chairman Gary Loveman plans official nnouncements mid-summer along with news of other Vegas property upgrades at the Flamingo and adjoining Harrah’s plus at least one new addition to our skyline.

Funny Gal
My favorite funny girl Rita Rudner is moving to Harrah’s in October after her 5-year-run at NYNY ends in June when her theater will be turned into the Crobar nightclub. She’ll use the summer break from performing to promote her new book "Turning Tables" being published on August 29 -- certain for success since that’s my lucky birthday date! Along with Phyllis Maguire, she hosted "The Vegas Dozen" awards charity at Saks Fifth Avenue to raise funds for the Nevada Cancer Institute in salute to a dynamic dozen community leaders who included moguls Steve Wynn, Tom Breitling and Danny Greenspun plus entertainers Siegfried Fishbacher and Roy Horn – making another memorable appearance out of his wheelchair.

She told me, "I call them the dirty dozen, but I don’t think they will
like that because they are twelve men who have given loads to the community and they are very generous, and very successful and I am going to try to be funny and not have them hate me, because you know funny is hard if you are going to be nice. I will tread a thin line
and I am in a department store, which makes me happy."

"Vegas has become a very philanthropic town and this is to benefit the cancer institute and I think the money was raised in a very short amount of time. They said we are going to build a cancer institute and you think yeah thatis a good idea, well three and a half years later it is
opened. We have a first class, first-rate cancer institute with all the latest in medicine and technologies and the greatest doctors. So, these are twelve men who greatly helped to contribute to that."

I asked if she was looking forward to her new home at Harrah’s? Every other sentence is an ad-lib joke with Rita, but she commented, "I loved working at NYNY, but I know I will love working at Harrah’s because that puts me even closer to the Forum Shops. I was having difficulty getting from the mall to work and now it is right across the
street. I’m a shop-a-holic but I have a friend who is down to twice a week but she has to wear this patch."

"I am at New York New York till June 10 then I have a few projects that I have going on. My book Turning the Tables is coming out -- about a relationship that goes horribly wrong in Vegas and a woman who eventually gets even. Don’t worry Robin, it’s just fiction. I know so much about the goings on in Vegas that we created a fun casino called Heaven and kind of made Vegas a bit sillier than it really is, and we satirized Vegas and depicted a relationship with a magician that goes horribly wrong. It’s actually a new theme hotel to cost $72 billion dollars and I am going to have it ready by tomorrow."

Cheers, Darlings
Congratulations are in order to a couple of good friends: singer Susan Anton (who is now starring in Hairspray at the Luxor) has never played a game of poker before but won the $10,000 first prize narrowly beating out David Brenner in a celebrity poker tournament filmed at Caesars Palace by the Queer Eye guys for their 3 Vegas specials to be aired in June. Gorgeous Susan down to just one chip at one point donated the money to the Habitat for Humanity charity. Now to my pal and Barry Manilow’s record producer Ron Dante, who is not only in the middle of producing Trini Lopez’s new CD,  but planning a new Vegas show for the singer to open here this fall. Ron has been in and out of Vegas all month as Ain’t Misbehaving, his original Broadway hit based on the music of Fats Waller, opens Downtown at the Plaza Hotel on April 26.

Tonight’s Tip, April 13: A quartet of clowns, characters and aerialist from the cast of Le Reve are revisiting their homegrown theatrical Manhattan
roots in This Is Our Youth which opens at the Las Vegas Little Theatre and runs through Friday, April 28 at 8PM, but also with unique late 1AM performances for cast members of other Strip shows. It’s the inaugural drama from the New American Theatre Project.

If we’re behaving well or badly drop us an email to robinsvegas@aol.com with your
views on Vegas. Meantime tomorrow check back here for exclusive news
from behind the scenes of the beautiful Miss Hawaiian Tropic beauty pageant and the renewal of three super exciting projects for a second-go-round! Don’t miss a single exclusive edition of Luxe Life, click here or at the 'Alert Me' uptop if you’d like an ongoing daily timely reminder the moment the new edition of LuxeLife is posted.

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