GAMBLING INSIDER

On a day when his company announced record fourth quarter profits, casino developer magnate Steve Wynn announced plans to build a new Wynn Resorts hotel in Las Vegas.

The Wynn West, which will be located just across the street from the Wynn and Encore hotels, will be a 2,000-3,000 room hotel development on a 38-acre site that the company purchased in December for $336m.

Addressing industry analysts in the company’s fourth quarter results conference call, Wynn said: “What we are going to do across the street is going to go rather quickly because I have been giving it thought for a long time. I don’t think the design and development period is going to be very long.”

On the call, Wynn revealed that the company is also building a hotel, convention centre and lake resort, Paradise Park, behind its current properties.

Construction has already begun on the Wynn Paradise Park, a 47-story, 1,500-room hotel between the existing Wynn and Encore towers which is just adjacent to a 1,600ft long and 700ft wide hourglass shaped lagoon.

The lagoon, to be placed on the existing 130-acre Wynn Golf Club land, will be surrounded by a one-mile boardwalk, a white-sands beach and will feature regular carnival style parades.

The Wynn West will be linked to the Wynn and Encore hotels by an “air-conditioned umbilical hallway.”

Wynn was upbeat about the potential timescales involved in building his latest casino development adding: “I am going to get those damn buildings up as fast as I can because I want to capture more of the absolutely inevitable visitor and tourist traffic that Las Vegas will experience in the next 15 to 20 years.”