My Las Vegas Business Press piece on Encore is up. It’s an expansion of my original post on this site. Here’s my grand conclusion:
Encore, in its essence, is hopeful. Even the name is a reminder that something came before, and something will come after. It’s both a great new resort and a call to remember that as long as it continues to change, Las Vegas will survive.
Insomuch as it’s possible to plumb a casino opening for a deeper read on the current American mindset, I’m giving it a shot. I’d really like to develop this into a 2000-word or so essay that pulls in the history of the Strip, speculation, consumerism, much more. Any editors out there want to pay for such a piece? Just checking.
Together, I think Wynn and Encore are the first Vegas resort that’s not looking backward: there’s no nostalgia for the past or for imagined versions of other, more notable, places. It looks like City Center and Fountainebleau will be in the same mold. Whether you love or hate the Wynn suite of properties, you’ve got to admit that stylistically they are a world away from, say, the Palazzo and Venetian, which are supposed to evoke the glories of a city whose heyday passed before Columbus sailed. They are original without making a fetish of their modernism.
If we don’t have the airline capacity to deliver people to town, though, does any of this make a difference in 2009? Later in the week I’ll be developing my year-in-review/looking ahead columns, and I think that will be the big question.