Wynn & the Ship of Phools

Whisking in just under the wire, Wynn Resorts submitted its financing package for the soon-to-be-ex-Foxwoods casino project in Philadelphia. Evidently Steve Wynn has thought better of slugging his new casino “SW,”* as reflected at left in the photo taken by Steve Friess (but subsequently yanked from the VegasHappensHere.com Web site at Wynn’s request; it’s still on view at PlanPhilly.com).

The concept replicates some of the design features of Encore Macau, its elegant portico and façade hint at a 19th century aesthetic that would highly appropriate to Philadelphia, and a broad greensward sweeps down toward the Delaware River — or so it would appear, since the design is one best appreciated from a distance.

(* — Employing a suddenly coined “off-brand” for the property sends the implicit message that the City of Brotherly Love isn’t good enough for the “Wynn” imprimatur, a PR pitfall the mogul needn’t risk. Besides, what good is the equity of the Wynn brand if you don’t leverage it? If Wynn flack Maureen Garrity is prophetic in her suggestion that Wynn might keep his name off the casino, the underlying connotation that Philly is somehow beneath him doesn’t bode well for the future. I’m not sure Wynn HQ has realized yet that it’s not dealing with the eternally pliant Clark County Commission and worshipful Vegas press corps here.)

So it’s all good, right? Apparently not. Wynn was warned by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to hew closely to the existing Foxwoods plan. Aside from being fugly as all get-out and as different in scope from what Wynn has explicitly pitched to the PCGB as night is from day, this puts Wynn betwixt yet another rock and a hard place. The latter would be the Penn-Praxis study, which was roundly critical of Foxwoods’ design and enjoys the partial endorsement of Mayor Michael Nutter. (Nutter’s views on riverfront aesthetics are inarguably more germane to the issue at hand than are those of the PCGB, which continues to live down to its Keystone State Kops reputation.) Wynn’s low-slung, unobtrusive design doesn’t meet all the Penn-Praxis criteria — which call for “stacked” mid- or high-rise casinos, but it comes closer than did Foxwoods’ “big box” concept.

Neither a rock nor a hard place but simply underfoot is a bunch of do-gooders called the Central Delaware Advocacy Group. Here they are at their hand-wringing, holier-than-thou best.

If you are “appalled at Wynn’s lack of knowledge about the Philadelphia waterfront” — as was I — then the appropriate course of action would be to try to bring either the company or the man himself up to speed. But Society Hill Civic Association President Rosanne Loesch doesn’t want to soil her dainty hands by meeting with — ugh! — a casino owner, thinking it better if Wynn were left in the dark. Otherwise, the mere proffer of information might be construed as “political cover” and we can’t have that, can we? Pass the tea, Alexandra dahling.

If Wynn were expecting the kind of admiring reception he normally receives in Las Vegas or on Wall Street, he’d get a rude awakening from this video … although I would fear for his blood pressure if he watched it. The smug, condescending, downright patronizing manner in which CDAC members talk about Wynn and his company makes you wish Elvis Presley was still around so he could put a bullet through the TV screen.

CDAC’s basic strategy seems to be: Let Wynn twist in the breeze and, if he brings forth a plan to our liking, we’ll take credit — without actually doing anything to deserve it. Refusing to be involved in the solution, CDAC is content to become part of the problem.

One of Foxwoods’ mistakes was to conceptualize a casino-resort in an area of Philadelphia more conducive to an Aliante Station or Eastside Cannery sort of project. Wynn is trying to remediate that error and, in its broad strokes, his concept is highly astute. (The specifics sound good, too, but they’ve been sporadic so far.) Neil Bluhm‘s Sugar House nabbed the superior location, closer to downtown and more apt for a “casino-based destination resort” (an old Steve Wynn coinage). Wynn Resorts is trying to make lemonade from lemons and getting damned little help, from the sound of things.

It would appear that Wynn’s best hope for breaking the current impasse is to embrace the spirit (if not the letter) of Penn-Praxis, make common cause with Mayor Nutter and thereby, hopefully hammer the PGCB into seeing reason. And if the dithering burghers of CDAC get sideswiped in the process, well, that’d be fine, too.