Le jacque pot
New $800 million resort features
50-story replica of Eiffel Tower
LAS VEGAS -- Even in this
gambling Mecca, where megaresorts have assumed identities ranging
from Rome to Rio, Mandalay to Manhattan, Venice to Egypt, the idea
seemed a stretch.
Re-create Paris and the Eiffel Tower
on the Las Vegas Strip?
Some scoffed at the idea three
years ago when Arthur Goldberg announced plans for a new megaresort
featuring the icons of Paris.
The city of lights,
replicated in the city of neon lights?
Yet, Goldberg's
dream comes to fruition Sept. 1 when the $800 million Paris Las
Vegas Casino Resort opens.
"Everything is to the
letter like you'd find it in Paris," says resort president Paul
Pusateri, standing in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower replica. "Our
goal was to capture the essence of Paris and have it present in
every aspect of the resort."
Pusateri recalls meeting
with Goldberg, chairman of parent Park Place Entertainment Corp.,
discussing a theme for the new resort they planned on a prime
24-acre patch of desert adjacent to the company's Bally's Las Vegas
Hotel-Casino.
"What about Paris?"
Goldberg suggested.
"We knew as soon as we started
research that this was the perfect theme," Pusateri remembers. "And
it offered the most powerful icon in the world, the Eiffel Tower."
Las Vegas may not be running out of themes, but it's
stretching the limits.
In the past decade, the town
has seen the emergence of the Caribbean-themed Mirage, the medieval
Excalibur, the pyramid-shaped Luxor, the MGM Grand, pirate-themed
Treasure Island, Mediterranean-styled Monte Carlo, Gotham knockoff
New York-New York, Brazilian-themed Rio, Italian-themed Bellagio,
two South Seas-styled resorts, Mandalay Bay and the Resort at
Summerlin, and a touch of Venice in The Venetian.
Since 1989, the number of hotel rooms has nearly
doubled, from 67,390 to the present 120,000, and the annual visitor
count has jumped from 18.1 million a decade ago to 30.6 million in
1998.
Rob Powers, a spokesman for the Las Vegas
Convention and Visitors Authority, sees Paris fueling the current 9
percent increase in visitors that began with the opening of Bellagio
in October, followed by Mandalay Bay in March and The Venetian in
May.
"Paris is the latest in a series of themed
properties that have helped to redefine the city," Powers says.
Some casino executives were skeptical when Goldberg
talked of replicating the Eiffel Tower, but the project has become
one of the city's most striking landmarks.
Resort
engineers obtained the tower's original architectural plans and
followed them in minute detail, even bringing back paint chips to
replicate the color.
There's a 225-seat gourmet French
restaurant on the 11th floor of the tower, and an observation deck
atop the 542-foot structure. Three of the four legs rise from inside
an 85,000-square-foot casino that offers the aura of a Paris park
setting.
The Eiffel Tower is not the only French icon
copied at Paris Las Vegas.
Guests arrive on a
circular drive featuring a two-thirds replica of the Arc de
Triomphe. There are also copies of the Paris Opera House and The
Louvre. And the 2,916-room, 34-story hotel replicates the
800-year-old Hotel de Ville, which is now the Paris City Hall.
Room rates will run $125 to $230 per night.
Paris is also accessible from Bally's through an area
that was once the Celebrity Showroom, home of stars such as Sammy
Davis Jr., Tom Jones, Barbara Mandrell, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
Linked together, Bally's and Paris offer a total of
5,700 rooms.
On the Paris side, the floor is paved in
cobblestones and employees greet guests and each other with "bon
jour" and other salutations, the result of "French cultural
training" given the 4,200 workers.
Near the opulent
registration area is the 1,200-seat Le Theatre des Arts, a showroom
that in January will showcase the first English adaptation of the
hit French musical "Notre Dame De Paris."
And off the
registration area, on the edge of the casino, a reminder of who pays
the tab for these elegant new megaresorts. A row of slot machines
with blinking lights beckons with the words "Le Jacque Pot."
Jason Ader, a casino analyst for Bear, Stearns &
Co., says investors on Wall Street had been concerned about
overbuilding, but no longer.
"There's evidence that
the Las Vegas market is growing, that more people are coming," Ader
says. "The Asian economy is improving and the airlines are
scheduling more flights to the city."
He thinks that
the Paris resort will be a hit.
"It's in a great
location, the price is right, and there's already a buzz about it in
the tourist and travel community," he says.
Also, Ader
says, despite the $800 million price tag, relatively speaking it
wasn't that expensive. The Bellagio, for instance, cost $1.6 billion
to build and the Venetian cost $1.5 billion.
"They're doing it in the right way, not spending a lot of
money, which will deplete shareholder value," Ader says. "I think
you can build a great product and not spend everything you have
in the bank."
www.summer
holiday.info
www.winter holiday.org.uk 
Palm trees in Paris?
Hotel-casino set to open in September,
1999.
The main attraction?