Hospitality Design - July 2017 - 126

recap

Roger Thomas, executive vice president of design, Wynn Design and Development, and Steve Wynn, CEO
and chairman of the board, Wynn Resorts, with HD's Michael Adams during their keynote at HD Expo

conference highlights

PERFECT PAIR
Two industry legends-designer Roger Thomas and
hotelier Steve Wynn-share the stage

How did you meet each other?
Steve Wynn: We're actually, as a matter of
speaking, brothers. My father died when I was
a senior at the University of Pennsylvania,
and I came to Las Vegas when I was 24. I met
Roger's father, E. Parry Thomas, the owner and
chairman for Las Vegas Bank, later known as
Valley Bank, and in effect became adopted by
Parry. Because of our preexisting relationship
since childhood, he joined me and took over the
creations of these interiors and these hotels.
Roger Thomas: We were at dinner one night
at a good friend's house and Steve said, 'What
are you doing?' I told him very proudly what I
was involved in, and he said, 'I'm about to build
the most spectacular hotel Las Vegas has ever
seen,' and he described a project that was never
built called Victoria Bay and my dream started.
He said, 'Would you like to come and help?'
Well, the next day I was supposed to meet with
Charles Silverman [of Yates Silverman] to go
over the details of acquiring 50 percent of the
company. Instead, I met with him and said I had
an offer that if I look back on, I would always
regret. 'Thank you for your kindness and
your confidence, but I am going to go work
with Steve.'

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What was the first project you worked
on together?
RT: When Victoria Bay did not begin to
happen, Steve decided he wanted to apply some
of the designs we had done for Victoria Bay to
the Golden Nugget.
SW: We picked an outsider designer that he
and I would edit, in that case it was Henry
Conversano. We're going to do the Nugget over,
and Roger [came into] that process and by the
time it finished, he was in control of it.
RT: Henry and Steve also taught me, in
addition to a lot of other things, that I needed
to learn about the history of design and the
history of hospitality. I needed to learn about
entertainment. I needed to learn that I was
creating spaces of expectation, places where
memories were to be created, and to do that I
had to do things that became indelible to that
memory and unique to that memory, so if
you wanted something of that elevated
memory sense-that dramatic, wonderful,
romantic sense of experience-you'd just have
to come back.

Can you both take us back to 1980?
What was the hospitality profile like in
Las Vegas?
SW: The history of the town almost has some
comic relief to it. Remember, the founding
fathers of Las Vegas were refugee, immigrant

bookmakers and gamblers who had been
around various parts of the country, skirting the
edges of the law, having casinos in places where
they could get away with it, but always craving
legitimacy, which they couldn't get, except in
Nevada. In the '50s, they migrated out here and
built the places that are legendary: the Sahara,
the Riviera, the Thunderbird, the Flamingo,
Frontier, Desert Inn, the Sands, the Dunes, and
the Tropicana.
Now, these guys had short money. Since
normal financing was not available, they had
to go get a design firm, and there was a guy in
Los Angeles named [Albert] Parvin who did
two things: He would buy points in the place,
which means he put up $30,000 or $50,000, and
then he would also finance the interiors, which
cost $2 or $3 million for these places. Parvin
Doorman was a kitchen supply place, so Parvin
Doorman, under the control of Albert, did every
one of the hotels. They all looked alike.
RT: They had a banker on the board named E.
Parry Thomas, too.
SW: Parry, the local banker was [Roger's]
father, who would provide $1.5 million
mortgages. This Mormon from Utah was the
only one who had enough faith in these baggy
pants characters. And Parry introduced them to
Parvin.
Design excellence or imagination was as
foreign to these people as an island in the South

Photo by PWP STUDIO

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Hospitality Design - July 2017

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