'Futuramas' in even the late 1930s and certainly by the early 1950s, had glorious views of what future America would look like. Magazines of that era featured
'work saving kitchens' for Mom with mechanical dishwashers. Traffic would move quickly on limited access 'freeways'. Better yet, we would all be whisked around town avoiding traffic with a great new idea called the 'monorail.' Funny the monorail never made it to Houston or Dallas. But the City of Tomorrow finally got built, gee would Bugsy Siegel be proud, welcome to Las Vegas.
Click here to learn about City Center. The Mirage was the first billion dollar project in Vegas in 1989. Now the ante is much higher. This project will cost $14 Billion. The old Frontier property sold recently, an Israeli group is expect to spend over $5B on a project to replace it.
I counted 13 construction cranes from our first room at the MGM Grand. And Grand it is. Both Wolfgang Puck and Emerill have restaurants on the property. The resort boasts three Maybachs to ferry VIPS the two miles to the airport and back. But I digress.
Futuramas boasted that modern cities would be planned for all this. Yet frankly Vegas is the best example I have ever seen of actually getting the mass transportation located near the city. In fact the airport darned near abuts the hotels themselves. I understand there are over 90,000 hotel rooms. The recording on the Las Vegas Monorail says that all these rooms are 90% booked during the week and 95% on the weekends. MGM was booked solid last Sat Night, and starting price is $189 per room. The monorail costs $8 a day to ride and allows access to the City Convention Center. Several of the large hotels have their own centers but the 3.2 M square foot Convention Center is large enough to host the very biggest events like the SEMA auto accessory show and the computer shows.
It USED to be that the rooms and food were intentionally priced cheap. One dollar breakfasts and $35 rooms were the norm in the Rat Pack Days. Back then multi story signs like the one at the Sands shown in the foregoing article trumpeted which acts played which casinos. Those folks about priced themselves out of the business but are back today. Barry Manilow is playing the Hilton, magicians Lance Burton, David Copperfield and newcomer Hans Klok (partnering with Pam Anderson) are staples. Celine Dione is sold out of course and others like Toby Keith and Jay Leno make appearances.
Harrahs has become a miniature Paris, France with a half sized replica of the Eiffel Tower and a Parisian themed interior. The Bellagio features a giant water display and a truly gorgeous garden inside. The Mirage has retained the White Tigers for display. Even the MGM had a couple of very lazy lions on display. Wynn's is the current state of the art featuring a Penske Ferrari dealership no less.
In a way the more it changes the more it is the same. There are no windows or clocks in casinos, they want you in gambling not out enjoying the 106+ degree heat.
I frankly think that gambling or gaming if you will has lead to the fascination with the stock market. Think about it, buying a stock that does not pay a dividend is rather like a long term roulette game in which one hopes that your number will eventually come up a winner. The latest fad as you have read in the WSJ is speculation on high rise condos. I literally could not count how many have already been built. Oh no on seems to live in them. Starting at around $500 K, everyone is playing a sort of musical chairs condo game hoping to sell theirs while prices are still rising. One cabbie observed that prices started at about $450K rose to $600K and had now settled back to $500K. Of course you understand that until City Center is completed there is really no traditional town here, no bank towers, or centers of commerce other than hotels with gambling casinos, hmm, sort of defines business eh? And so we have betting on games of chance reflected in betting on casinos which get ever bigger and bolder leading to betting on condos and of course betting on outlying gaming areas in the state.
Unions have organized the workers. Good thing, but like most union jobs there does not seem to be much upward mobility. I saw a lot of older dealers who I guess have spent their lives as well dealers. Nothing wrong with that I guess. Las Vegas from that standpoint is I suppose the ultimate example of the 'service economy' run amok. The town produces nothing but, er well ah service. I can see that it would be difficult to convince young people caught up in this gambling mentality that one should go to college. After all here they go to Dealer School. Consider these testimonials about such higher ed!
Now honestly how Harry Reid (D-Nevada) can look in a camera and say the economy is lacking is beyond me. But then the purpose of a union has always been to get a middle class income for a person of very limited skills, that's Vegas.
But all of this relates to Managerial Accounting. The cost of running any one of these facilities is staggering. And clearly all that has to be calculated to the last penny. Break even and target profit calculations make all the difference. Sensitivity analysis tells us how much business could drop before we are in trouble.
Is there an end to all this? I saw currency exchange rates at the cashier office for multiple countries, truly this is an international destination. Truly Vegas is the epitome of the ultimate service economy. Gambling, restaurants, shows, shopping, and just generally hemorhagging money. A prolonged downtrun would be disastrous, but for now 9/11 is but a memory. But for now, all bets are on, Viva Las Vegas.
PS I had not been out there in at least ten years. The wife's daughter got married there and so, I was along for the ride, so to speak. Plan on taking a credit card with a large cap if you go, nothing is cheap any more.
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