Wynn Resorts Hoping to Break Ground on $1.5 Billion “Paradise Park” This Year

Posted on: January 27, 2017, 03:00h. 

Last updated on: January 27, 2017, 02:12h.

Casino.org Staff Writer Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming.

Wynn Resorts is wasting no time in building its own version of paradise on earth.

Steve Wynn announced he hopes to begin construction of his “Paradise Park” before the end of this year, as he reiterated that his company’s future lies in non-gaming attractions.

Wynn Resorts plans to spend $1.5 billion transforming the Wynn Golf Club into a 38-acre lagoon surrounded by sandy beaches. A new 1,000-room hotel-casino will overlook the lake, offering restaurants and nightlife attractions.

Wynn could barely conceal his excitement when he announced the project last April. There would be water skiing and paddle-boarding, he said, and “ice cream and a fireworks show every night, just like Disney.”

“This is the most fun project in my 45 years,” he enthused. “Somebody take the other side, tell me what’s wrong with this idea? We’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid.”

“I Think We Nailed It”

Nine months on, and he’s still bursting to get started. “I think we have nailed it down,” he told investors and analysts during a Q4 earnings call this week. “I hope to take the business plan to our board of directors in the second quarter and be in a position to begin work in the fourth quarter.”

If it goes ahead as planned, the resort will nestle behind the Wynn and Encore resort towers that face the Las Vegas Strip. It would be Wynn’s first major Las Vegas development since the Encore opened in 2008.

The projected revenues of the Paradise Park would dwarf those of the Wynn Golf Club it plans to replace. The golf club pulls in around $5 million per year, while the company believes the proposed resort would take in $300 to $400 million per year.

“We want to take our non-casino revenue to enormously high levels,” said Wynn.

Wynn Palace Bolsters Revenue

The performance of the new Wynn Palace Macau has proved to be a vindication of that philosophy. The resort, heavy on non-gaming attractions and amenities, helped push the company to better-than-expected revenues for 2016 with its “very good mass market success,” in Wynn’s words.

The casino mogul said the Wynn Palace had been generating $1.6 million in operating income every day since the start of the year, just four months after opening. It took the Wynn Macau a year to generate $1 million a day, he said.

“The long-term thrust of China is inexorable and undeniable, and that’s why we built what we built and we’re going to build more in the future,” he added.