Nocturnal Nevada

Ever Youthful, Ever Fearless: Viva Las Vegas 

    The high rollers, spending their nights sipping single-malts and watching for that ace on the blackjack table, may start to notice Las Vegas’ newest investor. It is not the multi-million-dollar oil tycoon or even the Forbes 500 three-piece suit stepping out of the stretched limo. 

    Sin City’s fashionably-late-arriving scene-setter is the 25-year-old blonde and her four girlfriends in the taxi line. It is the metrosexual guy in the Prada shirt who tends bar in Los Angeles and needs a weekend away. It is the cocktail waitress who gets off a six-hour shift at midnight and desperately needs a drink. Welcome to the new Vegas. 

The Newcomers
    Where before they were considered nickel slot spenders, and easily bi-passed change on the collective toll road of casino revenue — today, tonight, tomorrow — they are an aesthetically pleasing army and an ambitious asset, a financial force for on-premise personnel. The newcomers of nightlife are a collective, golden jackpot of profit, but the casino is only the walkway — the means to where America’s young adults throw down their money. It is not so much the change teller that they wait in line for, but it is the red velvet rope, bottle service and the bartender’s eye that catch their attention.

    These days, as each evening evolves from dusk till dawn, the lucrative patron eases from old to young. As Vegas itself evolves, we all are seeing a new youthfulness, successful because of experienced maturity behind the scenes. Vegas is getting younger — and it’s getting better at it.

    In nature, the night belongs to predators — larger, more lithe, sexy, stalking animals — the shadow and light, the powerful and dominant. In Las Vegas, the night is theirs, as well. There are those with more money than conceptually fathomable, and they are staking claim to a lion’s share of the industry’s most lucrative real estate. Behind the smoke machines and sound boards the size of SUVs, the men and women profiting in Las Vegas today are the nightlife geniuses — easily located in the lobby or on the rooftop of every major hotel and casino. From celebrity investors to New York’s food and beverage industry innovators, Vegas rapidly is becoming the star in the nightlife sky.

Willing to Wow
    Design is the cornerstone of the draw, with Sin City’s cliché of “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” now being applied in a different sense. There is nowhere else that does it to such a scale, where sleek and elegant meet gargantuan and improbable. From the sheer size to the minute detail, Las Vegas is exploring every spectrum of the design paradigm, often leaving any semblance of paradigm out of the plan. It is the extreme, from venues such as Tao, where a 20-foot Buddha cloaks the room in its shadow, to Tabú, where three of the world’s total six Reatrix lighting systems splash interactive color on custom tables built for dancing rather than drink display.

    Designers such as Cleo Design, the company who gave Studio 54 its style, work to outdo everything that has been done before. This year, a $3.5 million facelift accompanies  Studio 54’s eighth birthday party, “just to keep things fresh,” MGM Grand’s Executive Director of Nightclubs and Entertainment, Mike Milner says. Keeping it fresh at 54 means the expected confetti and strobe, but it also entails bungee jumpers, wall walkers and acrobats. Black-and-white photos of celebrities adorn the walls, lending a classy, nostalgic balance, all in the beckoning glow of massive fiber-optic chandeliers.

    Think a $3.5 million complete overhaul sounds extravagant? Consider the Rio Hotel’s new staircase for Voodoo Lounge, added at a price tag of $1 million to the 51st floor lounge. Stretching out against the night sky, the wrought iron weighs more than 40,000 pounds and took several helicopters to place on the roof. With nothing below but the crisp, desert air, the stairs are suspended more than 500 feet above The Strip.

Lighter Fare, Larger Martinis
    Appealing to a younger market mandates a merger of the excessive venue design with the realm of libations and cuisine. In a marketplace where people come specifically to spend money, the city of Las Vegas has the potential for higher revenue generation in the areas of food and beverage than other locales.

    “Vegas demographics are evolving, and people are dining later,” Oliver Wharton, director of restaurants for the Light Group, says of the viable 21-to-35-year-old demographic. Dinner most always is a drinking affair these days, and the restaurant/lounge hybrids are being built in nearly every hotel.

    Having worked in New York City, London and San Francisco, Wharton admits, however, that all in all Las Vegas is a tougher market. “In some respects,” he says, “you have to build a great product, because there is so much competition. Everyone is trying to get that billboard space, the in-room programming, the in-flight magazine articles and the taxicabs. There are so many options, you have to fight to be seen, and you have to have a great product.”

    Named by Life & Style magazine as one of the country’s “Top 5 Celebrity Restaurants,” FIX, located in the Bellagio and owned by Light Group, was heating up the competition in and out of the kitchen before its first birthday. The design, by Graft Lab of Berlin, Germany, centers on undulating, layered planks of Costa Rican Padauk wood, but it definitely is the unusual menu that is fueling this fire. Executive Chef Brian Massie’s menu includes Kobe Sliders, Very Adult Fried Mac & Cheese and made-to-order donuts, proving that in Vegas, the design factor indeed factors in to everything. “The notion,” Wharton says of Fix, “is fun, approachable food that people understand, and they do not need a dissertation before they order it. They are less worried about individual plates. The trend is people want to be able to share food.”

    Ever expanding, the Light Group is abuzz over its unveiling of STACK this winter at the Mirage, incorporating, again, more simplistic American cuisine with more specialized cocktails such as the Cantaloupe Mojito and the S’mores Martini.

When State-of-the-Art Simply Won’t Do
    Signaling the lovers of the late-night across the country, these ultra-elaborate lounges and celebrity-haunted mega clubs are  now scattered across the properties of The Strip like diamonds. From the N9NE Group’s properties at The Palms, such as ghostbar, with its acrylic, see-through floor, and Rain in the Desert, with its 14-foot fireballs, the extravagance is pervasive. There is Ra at the Luxor, with names such as Boy George commanding the DJ booth, and there are rumjungle, Ivan Kane’s Forty-Deuce and House of Blues pulling in millions of dollars at Mandalay Bay.
   

    “When I got here five years ago, there were only a couple of clubs,” says Sean Christie, general manager of Jet Nightclub, the Mirage’s newest addition. “There have been at least 15 to 20 nightclubs opened in the last five years.”
   

    With that kind of growth, owners are forced to spend top dollar on promotions, and Las Vegas quickly is pulling in DJ and live performance talent that many in New York and Miami are shying away from due to sheer cost. “In other places throughout the country, you are not going to see people spending $10, $15, $20 million on a club,” Christie says. “Where in Vegas, it is becoming the norm.”

    Jet very recently opened on December 31, 2005, with Kid Rock rocking the DJ booth and a sound system never before heard by patrons in any club in America. “It has everything that anyone could imagine as far as lasers and cryogenics,” Christie says. Designed and installed by John Lyons, co-owner of the legendary Avalon clubs in New York and California, this new Eastern Acoustic Works series system is Light Group’s “most ambitious sound and lighting project,” Christie says.
 

    Names recognized the world over have become regulars to the stages and turntables in this city. Rain in the Desert at the Palms alone has hosted Ozzy Osbourne, Santana, Nelly , Britney Spears and KISS, while other clubs in Vegas reportedly have DJs under million- dollar contracts.

    Pure, the $14 million, ultra-lucrative darling in the lobby of Caesars Palace, is another example of Las Vegas’ almost-open-wallet policy.

    “Pure has secured, starting in ‘06, some of the best DJs in the world,” says Judy Stone, the in-house public relations director for the club. DJ-AM is set to fill his role as the club’s resident DJ beginning this month. His opening performance will showcase Travis Barker live on drums. “From all across the country,” Stone says, “(Las Vegas) is really the only place you can come and see an act like those guys together. It is what we book –– and how we book it.”

The Savvy Stepchild
    The trendsetting power of New York City in all of these movements is undeniable. While some may disagree, many will concede that Miami, often viewed as No. 2 in the nightlife food chain, is indebted to the city that never sleeps for nearly everything it provides in the way of after-dark entertainment. And with New York, this spillover, in turn, has helped to spawn the younger, fresher, open-all-night Las Vegas — even down to the recent Ian Schrager-style cabanas and oversized lounge furniture.

    “It is New York and Miami,” Pauly Freedman, director of nightclubs for Harrah’s, says. “But, we are definitely coming in, with Tao and the opening of Jet.” Coyote Ugly’s Las Vegas location was another bite out of the Big Apple, and the rumors are beginning to circulate on the possibility of B.E.D and Marquee moving in, as well. “It is at a rapid growth, and nightlife is becoming its own entity,” Freedman says. “Virtually every major hotel has a nightclub, ultra-lounge and bar atmosphere. The big players are coming to town from New York and Miami and have raised the bar for bottle service and the high-end customer.”

    Possibly the world’s most famous name in nightlife, Studio 54, rose from its Rubell-era slumber and now averages more than 600,000 people through its doors each year since opening eight years ago in the MGM Grand. “Right now, we are franchising the rights to Berlin and Hawaii,” MGM’s Milner says.
As the Marketplace Grows

    But where is the future for nightlife in Las Vegas? Some, like Stone of the newer Pure, say Las Vegas’ nightlife probably still is a little too young to ascertain what the longevity will be. Others, however, such as Sean Christie, are quick to point out that at some point the market will become over-saturated.

    These days, Christie says, “If you don’t have a nightclub in your establishment already, you are building one — and not everybody can win.”

    Presently, though, Las Vegas is carving its own territory-marking notch in the bedroom post of party legends, and the operators enjoying the ride couldn’t be happier. Going to previously unthinkable proportions in every aspect of operation, Sin City is moving away from strictly importing nightlife concepts to become one of the world’s largest exporters.

    “As the marketplace grows,” says Christie, “you will see that better products will win, rather than places that are just hype. We work very hard, and we dig in and get dirty.” NCB