Perlman to Run MGM’s Las Vegas Park

Clifford S. Perlman, a widely known but controversial figure within the nation’s gambling industry, was named Thursday to run the behemoth $700-million casino and amusement park that MGM Grand is planning to build in Las Vegas.

Perlman, 63, has been named chairman and chief executive of a new subsidiary known as MGM Grand Hotel and Theme Park. He will also join the board of MGM Grand.

The announcement, which caught several industry observers by surprise, reunites Perlman with Kirk Kerkorian, an old business associate in Las Vegas. Kerkorian owns almost all of MGM Grand’s stock.

Perlman is a veteran casino industry executive who, with his late brother, Stuart, once owned a controlling stake in Caesars World, which owns the Caesars Palace casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., and Las Vegas.

The Perlmans sold their shares in Caesars in the early 1980s after New Jersey regulators objected to their business ties to associates of the late gambling kingpin and organized crime figure Meyer Lansky.

The regulators took the position that they would not grant Caesars a permanent license to operate in Atlantic City until the Perlmans severed their ties to the firm. The casino is now one of the most successful in town.

Perlman is known to associates as a creative and colorful promoter who first brought big-time boxing matches to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Caesars World also prospered financially under the Perlmans’ control.

MGM Grand’s facility in Las Vegas is to be built on 113 acres along the Las Vegas Strip, across the street from the Tropicana Hotel. The facility will include an amusement park, along with a casino hotel with 5,000 rooms, the most in town.

“Clifford Perlman has a proven talent for running a world-class entertainment facility,” MGM Chief Executive Fred Benninger said in a statement. “He also has a special relationship with Las Vegas.”

The Perlman brothers rose from obscurity by building a restaurant chain in Florida known as Lum’s. They sold the chain to businessman John Y. Brown--later the governor of Kentucky--in 1971, two years after buying Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

In recent years, Perlman has dabbled in businesses ranging from airlines to gambling to real estate. He and his brother received a license to operate a luxury airline, known as Regent Air, but sold the company in 1984 amid heavy losses.

Perlman also received a license from Nevada gaming regulators to operate the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, but an agreement he had to buy the casino hotel later fell through. Most recently, he has been a real estate developer in Valencia.