It sure looks that way. Steve Wynn has petitioned Clark County to rezone some former residential land, along with the Wynn Las Vegas golf course as H-1. Presumably, Wynn wouldn’t need to rezone a golf course as "Limited Resort and Apartment" land … unless he was moving ahead with his on-again/off-again promise/threat to grind up the former Desert Inn golf course, one of the last major green spaces near the Las Vegas Strip, and put it to more high-density use.
For a glimpse at Wynn’s grand scheme for the vast acreage, visit the all-seeing, all-knowing VegasTodayandTomorrow.com and scroll down to the penultimate item on the page. It’s worth noting that the course, reconfigured to Wynn’s specifications, is less than two years old and cost roughly $500 million. It’s nice to know that Wynn is still cavalier with money — Wall Street’s money, that is. I mean, what’s a half-billion dollars between friends?
No free speech at Wynn? That’s the appearance of it, judging from the termination of dissident dealer Cynthia Fields, who filed the first (of several) National Labor Relations Board charges against the billionaire casino owner. Even if Fields were terminated for cause, it’s awfully convenient. Is this what Las Vegas’ leading entrepreneur has come to? Picking on single moms with toddlers?
Such peevishness would be consistent with Wynn’s decision to file a vindictive lawsuit against two dealers who were brave enough to take him to court over his tip-confiscation scheme. (On the other hand, maybe Steve is just a destitute old man and really, really needs the 75 grand. Let’s pass the hat for him, shall we?)
What we’re looking at is clearly a systematic campaign of intimidation and ruination, aimed at those employees courageous enough to stand up against Wynn’s high-handed appropriation of their tip money. Wynn’s own interpretation is that the money belongs to his company and is to be redistributed as he, in his imperial benificence, sees fit. The elderly Wynn must fancy himself an operatic grandee, flinging purses of doubloons to helpful serving wenches and lackeys, like the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto or Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
What’s even more dismaying than Duke Steve’s titanic petulance is the deafening quiet emanating from our ostensible civic leaders. Likewise, the editorial page of Clark County’s primary newspaper continues to cower in silence. Among public figures in Southern Nevada, only John L. Smith has had the huevos to take on Wynn, for which he received a boatload of trouble. When Wynn’s gravestone is carved, a fitting inscription would be, "And before him all Nevada trembled."
