Wynn addresses hotel crowd at NYU conference.

Mild-mannered Stephen Wynn, chairman and CEO of Mirage Resorts, provided the hotel industry with a rare glimpse at his thinking and planning as the company completes the $1.3 billion resort, Bellagio, now under construction in Las Vegas.

Wynn is a lover of arts and flowers, and plans to have plenty of both to "lift the human spirit" at Bellagio.

With 8,000 employees needed to operate the 160-acre paradise, he explained that his company is now big enough to provide 7,000 of the workers from their other Mirage Resorts.

"We are a company with strong family traditions," he said. When he opened his second resort in 1989, the Mirage, he recalled, he was happy to have one in five employees joining from the first venture, the Golden Nugget.

Mirage Resorts was also strong enough to attract the capital needed for the investment, and big enough to develop the huge tract that comprises the former Dunes Resort, and make it the most romantic resort in the world.

"We're taking new approaches and re-examining the relationship between fine art and the human spirit," he said.

The resort will have 3,000 rooms, $60 million worth of art displayed in a special exhibit hall, as well as an 11-acre lake with fountains that dance 250 feet off the water.

"I am incurably sick with developer's disease," he confided to laughs, then mentioned his wife, sitting in the audience. "Elaine says not to worry - I'm no danger to anyone but myself as long as I take my medication."

Wynn is obsessed with flowers and described the concept for the blooms that will be displayed at Bellagio, scheduled to open September 3, 1998.

A 40,000 square-foot greenhouse, out of public eye, will provide thousands of buds for the lobby displays and will "change the fragrance, aroma and the look" every three weeks. The soft-spoken Wynn and his wife later told REW he considers peonies to be his favorite flower.

The new Atlantic City project, to be constructed on 110 acres, is still in the formative stages, but will be called the "Garden." New Jersey is of course, the Garden State, but the name naturally ties into his love of blooms.

The couple are good friends with Loews Hotel CEO Jonathan M. Tisch, who chaired the New York University 19th Annual Hospitality Industry Investment Conference at the Waldorf Astoria to which Wynn gave his luncheon address last week. Tisch is also the president of the American Hotel Motel Association.

Also joining the head table were Robert Preston Tisch; former Deputy Mayor Peter Powers - who confided he really was "tired of government"; the city's Hotel Association President Joseph Spinnato; and NYC's Convention and Visitor's Bureau President Stephen J. Morello.

Michael D. Rose, chairman of Promus Hotel Corporation, joined them as the recipient of the C. Everett Johnson Award. Promus, You might recall, is a spinoff of Holiday, which Rose joined in 1974.

Earlier, Marriott International was the winner of the 1997 Deal of the Year for its $1 billion acquisition of Renaissance Hotel Group NV, creating a hotel group with nearly 1,400 properties comprising 275,000 rooms in 51 countries.

Because gambling is so available all over the country, Wynn says developers have to provide more to get visitors back. He's a believer in the new entertainment concepts that have made Las Vegas a family destination.

"We have to make this a place that people really enjoy being in, and not just for a night's rest," he explained. "They expect more."

He talked about the need for integrating the elements of gaming with hospitality, entertainment, retail, food and beverage "in a more focused way."

"We are students in this, we are not experts," he insisted.

Recalling an incident in which his good friend, basketball great Julius "Dr. J" Irving, told another player that he wanted to be remembered for his "consistency," Wynn described that word as one of the "great, wonderful words and ideas that we have" in the hotel industry.

He recently visited the new Crown casino resort in Australia that is so huge "it even has neighborhoods." But Wynn says there was no "consistency" in theme to unify the elements while keeping its "promise" to the public, and was therefore "schizophrenic."

"Everyone has confused integration with lamination," he bemoaned, describing developers "slapping" everything from movies to gambling together under one roof.

Instead, each enterprise should have a personality, as well as "consistency and integrity" in the ways it relates to the public.

"As you evaluate this opportunity in the hospitality business, the most important thing is to remember who you are," he forewarned the hotel conference attendees.

Observe the rules when designing a hotel casino, he said, to maintain the relationships of the parts to the whole.

"It's the building that allows you to deliver the services, and it's the building that allows the employees to deliver that promise, and the building that will thwart those employees if it's not designed right in the back of the house," advised Wynn. "You just can't be different for the sake of being different."

When he visits his own casinos, Wynn says all he notices are the mistakes. When pressed by a questioner, he related that to get to the lobby check-in desk at the Las Vegas Treasure Island, currently the city's highest grossing casino, the patrons have to cross through an endless line to the rest-rooms, which are closer to the entrance.

"When I designed that, I must have been in a hurry," he deadpanned to laughs. He is now re-designing the entire lobby at a cost of $25 million.

Encouraging the audience to find and take advantage of development ideas, he confided, "We have an endless opportunity for creative and novel thinking. It's more fun than anyone is entitled to have."