Elaine Wynn wasn’t expecting to cry, but she is prepared to. She dabs at her eyes with Kleenex, overtaken by events and feelings dating more than 30 years. “This is a deeply personal place for us,” says Wynn, who opened The Mirage with her then-husband, Steve Wynn, in November 1989.
Their daughers, Kevyn and Gillian, grew up as the hotel’s legend took hold. “The day we opened, the girls went to school They referred to the Mirage as their third sibling, and they never felt that way about the other properties.” Wynn has been invited by Hard Rock International CEO Jim Allen and Hard Rock President Joe Lupo to speak at the The Mirage’s closing event at the hotel’s porte-cochère.
The event would not have been complete without Elaine Wynn, a member of Las Vegas royalty. The largest shareholder in Wynn Las Vegas, Wynn recalled that the pressure to produce prompted acute anxiety — especially for Steve Wynn. “Steve had a panic attack that no one was going to show up, on opening day,” Wynn says.
“He was nervous that we hadn’t spent a gazillion dollars of marketing all over the world, and nobody was going to be here. Fortunately, they were wrong.” A final tour Wynn absorbs the memories as she walks through time, one last time, in her final tour of The Mirage.
She stops and looks inside the now-empty Parlour lounge. The space was originally a cocktail bar leading into high-limit gaming area, with baccarat on the upper level and blackjack on the lower. “We .