A $2-Billion Dream Wakes in Las Vegas

Poker player Don Colannino hatched his plan to join the lucky ones seeking the first inside look Thursday at the new Bellagio hotel and casino--the latest imposing edifice of conspicuous consumption, Las Vegas-style.

Standing outside the mammoth resort at 4 p.m., seven hours before its announced opening, Colannino leaned over a barricade and whispered to one of the red-jacketed security guards.

“He offered her $100 for her jacket so he could sneak inside and get a peek,” said Colannino’s wife, Doris. “He wants to be the first one inside like nobody’s business. To Don, this is a big deal.”

Like other gamblers, the 59-year-old Colannino, who came from Rhode Island for the opening, knew this was indeed not just the premiere of another casino, not another kitschy, loud, neon mirage along the over-hyped Vegas strip.

This was the much-awaited Bellagio, the $2-billion dreamscape come to life, straight from the mind of 56-year-old Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn. Designed as an Italian Renaissance palace, the Bellagio features $285 million in museum-quality masterpieces by Renoir, Monet, Picasso and Matisse.

With rooms starting at about $200 a night--higher than any other hotel on the strip--Wynn hopes to attract jet-setters who would normally bypass Las Vegas for the more cultured climes of Paris, Rome or Monaco. The hotel will also feature villas with private backyards, swimming pools and workout rooms, renting for as much as $6,000 a night.

The Bellagio will be a casino for adults. In a move against family-oriented ventures that feature roller-coasters and kiddie attractions, Bellagio patrons must be 18 or older unless they are hotel guests. And, as is the rule at Wynn’s three other casinos, no baby strollers allowed.

On Thursday, anticipation ran high. Everyone wanted the first look. By noon, the looky-loos were already clustered around Bellagio guard Natalie Thurston as she stood along Las Vegas Boulevard.

“Gambling joints open in this town all the time,” said David Garcia, a 50-year-old Texas warehouseman. “But this one is special. A casino for the ages.”

The curious peppered Thurston and other guards with questions about the opening hour and what the place looked like inside. “It’s sickly beautiful, breathtaking--there’s no other word for it,” she responded. “If I were you folks, I’d get my blanket and line up now. This place is gonna be a madhouse later.”

Waterworks and Gilded Doors

All day, passersby gawked at the 3,000-room resort with its nine-acre lake that each night will feature a dancing waterworks show, with fountains that shoot 26 stories into the air. They gazed at the eight trendy restaurants that dot the property, many along the faux Tuscan village waterfront, alongside such upscale retail outlets as Hermes, Giorgio Armani and Chanel.

By 7:30 p.m., thousands of people lined the block-long casino property waiting for the promised water show and fireworks display, and the eventual opening of the gilded doors.

About 40 police officers had been brought in for crowd control. Officials hope to avoid mistakes made when the Mirage Hotel opened on Thanksgiving eve in 1989 and hundreds stormed the casino, littering it with drink cups and leaving muddy footprints across the new carpets.

Recent casino premieres have been discreetly downplayed, with doors opening in the predawn hours of weeknights. “Our hope,” said Bellagio spokesman Alan Feldman, “is that by waiting until late Thursday night, with school and work the next day, we won’t have 10,000 people clamoring to get inside.”

Despite their efforts to cater to an upper-class clientele, those who run the Bellagio knew opening night could bring a decidedly lower class of Vegas patron--a nightmarish army of beer-swilling riffraff and casino bottom-crawlers.

On Thursday afternoon, those who waited to get in didn’t much look like high rollers. Most wore shorts revealing pale legs. Vegas resident Al Metzger sucked on a cigarette and tugged at his polyester pants.

“Hell, do I look like a man made of money to you?” he asked with a horselaugh. “I’m a dreamer, not a high roller. But I’m here anyway. Because I’m gonna see it all, man.”

Many who waited were superstitious gamblers who believe it’s lucky to be the first one to play a new casino’s slot machines. Others had their eyes on Megabucks, a collective slot machine jackpot that has been building all summer at casinos statewide and has a reputation for paying off on the occasions when Wynn opens a new property.

“I got a tip from a veteran last night,” whispered Kurt Gressmann of Sacramento. “He told me to be at the Bellagio tonight, said the slots are always a little bit looser when a new hotel opens up.”

On Thursday, only 100 people at a time were to be allowed into the casino. “We are going to make sure that Bellagio remains a calm and collected place,” Feldman said. “We’re not just going to open up the doors and let them stampede in. Our hotel is not going to be overrun.”

On Thursday evening, before the public opening, the Bellagio hosted an invitation-only benefit for 1,800 guests, some of whom paid $3,500 per couple, which included an overnight stay Thursday at the hotel. The first overnight patrons among the general public will not be moving in until tonight.

Proceeds went to the Foundation Fighting Blindness, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group. Wynn suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a debilitating eye disease that can lead to blindness.

In the days before the opening, the hotel tested its operations, with employees staying in pricey rooms and playing roulette and blackjack with fake money. Outside, the nightly dancing fountain tests drew hundreds of onlookers.

Not everyone was impressed.

“When’s it gonna stop?” asked Mike O’Connor of Van Nuys, looking at the site of the soon-to-be-opened Paris casino, with its faux Eiffel Tower. “Each one is getting bigger and bigger. When the Asian financial crisis really hits town, they’re all gonna come tumbling down, you wait and see.”

Vegas cab driver Nate Sugarman had a more upbeat take on the opening. The 42-year-old was starting a new career as a Bellagio poker dealer--a job he hoped would allow him to quit driving a cab forever.

Sugarman said he was among the 10,000 hired from 80,000 applicants. He was one of “the chosen few,” words he said Wynn used.

He shrugged his big shoulders. “I’m only going to make $5.15 an hour. I guess it’s spare no expense until it comes to paying employees. I just hope these high-rollers really do materialize so I can make some money in tips.”