The Great Casino Salesman

Steve Wynn is on a mission to gentrify gambling and make it just one more middle-class leisure pursuit

These days Las Vegas has become so sanitized that some casino operators are complaining. The city's largest hotel, the Excalibur, is a medieval castle that looks like Cinderella's at Disney World. The hotel that Bugsy Siegel built, the Flamingo, is now owned by Hilton. Characters like Benny Binion, who bragged of killing those who crossed him, and Bill Harrah, who in his 60s drag-raced with teenagers on Reno streets, have been displaced by quiet, invisible graduates of business schools. The last convicted felon to be spotted by a local columnist on the Strip was Michael Milken, the junk-bond king. "What this...

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