
By the early 1990s, Las Vegas’ Glitter Gulch was unrecognizable from previous glory days. New megaresorts had opened on the Strip, local casinos had emerged across the Las Vegas valley, and only 90 minutes away was Laughlin, which was proving a popular alternative destination for gamers. With Tribal and national expansion on the horizon, the future of the casino business in Downtown Las Vegas was precarious.
For those operating around Fremont Street, this changing landscape was a challenging one. In a unique moment, the city and several casino operators came together to solve a crisis in a dramatic fashion.
The Downtown picture
Today’s Fremont Street is an intense cluster of gambling joints and fun-loving tourists packed tight under the brightly lit canopy. It wasn’t always like that. Once, it was home to the town’s leading retailers and civic amenities, with visitors as likely to go shopping as gambling. After the tourist boom of the 1950s, retailers Ronzone’s, Sears and Penney’s closed and moved elsewhere, enabling the casino district to emerge. Although some commercial businesses remained active in Downtown, these were typically in the legal and banking sectors where the office supply was located.
For gaming, Downtown Las Vegas had always been a competitive market. For decades, many of the same faces competed over a half-mile stretch, often cooperating, but not always trusting each other.
Fremont Street falls within the boundaries of the city of Las Vegas, whereas the Strip is in Clark County. The city had led efforts to reinvent the district, unsuccessfully proposing a series of developments, such as creating urban parks, advancing transit methods’ to formulating a full-scale “Downtown Development Strategy.” Nothing had made progress.
In 1988, Downtown casinos earned $77m. In 1991, they reported a loss of $31m. The demise of Fremont Street as a hub would affect not just the casino owners but present a real challenge to the revenues of the city, which relied on Downtown’s gaming for income.
The only thing that united the operators was a joint realization that they needed to do something.
There was certainly no such unanimity on what had to happen, or who would pay for it.
Local business leader and political outsider, Jan Jones, ran for office in 1991. If anyone could advance change, it was the formidable new Mayor. Bill Noonan was appointed as City Manager, the amiable mid-Westerner arriving from South Florida. He was prepared for the challenge, if not the personalities.
Longstanding casino owner, Benny Binion, had died on Christmas Day 1989. His son, Jack who had been President of Binion’s Horseshoe for many years, now publicly led the family’s interests in Las Vegas. Jack Binion took the Horseshoe brand to Bossier City in Louisiana and Tunica, opening in 1994 and 1995 respectively. There was nobody on Fremont Street that knew the casino business better than Jack Binion but juggling a range of personal, business and ongoing familial challenges after the passing of his dominant father, was proving challenging.
The Brooklyn-born bookmaker Mel Exber, parlayed his love of baseball to become one of the world’s authorities on sports betting. He purchased the Las Vegas Club with Jackie Gaughan in 1962, and he ran the property, making it the home of sports. Many of the other operators admired Exber, and he would frequently be found in conversation with the elder statesman of Downtown.
Omaha native, Gaughan, had been operating Downtown since the early 1960s. He served as the collective memory and confidante to many of the other operators, knowing every detail of every square foot of the district’s history, keeping a notebook in his pocket which acted as his office. By the 1990s he held Fremont’s bookend properties, The Plaza and El Cortez, alongside smaller gaming halls, The Western and Gold Spike.
Sam Boyd had history Downtown. Managing the Mint for Milton Prell on its opening in 1957, (which was acquired by Binion’s in 1988) he had also operated and invested in a series of properties across the valley. Returning Downtown in 1971, he opened The Union Plaza as part of the consortium of owners (that included Gaughan). When his attorney son, Bill, joined the industry in 1975, Boyd Gaming was formed. The company built and opened The California on Ogden, and Sam’s Town on Boulder Highway, the latter creating the template for locals’ casinos in Las Vegas. They operated The Strip’s Stardust and Downtown’s Fremont giving them a strong foothold in all markets. In 1993, Sam Boyd died aged 82, leaving Bill to shape future strategy of the company.
Longtime friends Al Sachs, Herb Tobman and former mobster, Moe Dalitz, had conceived the Sundance, which opened in 1980, prior to their enforced exit from the Stardust and Fremont, which allowed Boyd to assume operations. None could subsequently pass licensing, and Jackie Gaughan was hired to run the casino until a sale could be achieved. Gaughan eyed up a discounted purchase, but instead the property was sold to the Reno based Fitzgeralds and rebranded to an Irish theme. Phil Griffith and Jerry Turk took charge 1988.
Turk was new to Downtown and an unlikely casino operator. The former Wall Street investment banker, had joined Fitzgeralds to grow their casino platform, bringing with him corporate thinking and a more ambitious vision. Prizing cooperation as well as competition, he chaired the Redevelopment Committee of the Downtown Progress Association.
The Four Queens was the vision of Benny Goffstein, an associate of Gaughan and Exber, who had started life on Fremont alongside them, before an illustrious career managing Strip casinos. The property had been open for just over a year when Goffstein suddenly died in 1967, aged 58. The operations were assumed by Elsinore, a subsidiary of Hyatt. Dave Hood was President until his own passing in 1977 and the role was assumed by his wife, Jeanne.
Having embarked in a disastrous project with Playboy in Atlantic City, Elsinore was having financial problems and entered its first bankruptcy but recovered after selling their Tahoe property. Despite being a key voice in communal affairs and friend to many of the Downtown leadership, the influential Hood departed in 1993. The company filed for second bankruptcy in 1995.
Elsewhere, Mark Brandenburg and Craig Ghelfi had assumed control of the Golden Gate from friends and family members, maintaining a multi-generational ownership of that property. Herb Pastor ran the Golden Goose, Coin Castle and Sassy Sally’s casinos on the western end of Fremont.
To the north of Fremont and Third Street, sat Andrew Tompkins’ Lady Luck, which was developed from the original newsstand he acquired in 1963 to an 800-room casino resort. Tompkins had expanded outside Nevada, opening a Lady Luck in Mississippi in 1991 and acquiring the Gold Coin Saloon in Colorado in 1993. The group then planned an expansive development drive across the south, as Riverboat casino licensing opportunities arose. With big plans came debt, and it was clear that the idiosyncratic, some may say polarizing, Tompkins was facing challenges running such a disparate business.
On his way to becoming an industry icon, Steve Wynn was flush with success and commercial validation of his previous decisions in Atlantic City and The Mirage. His financial interest in the Golden Nugget casino began in the late 1960s. By 1973, with local backing, he was President and Chairman. The Nugget’s first hotel tower arrived in 1977, a second in 1984 (as part of a larger renovation that incorporated the Elardi family’s Pioneer Club) and a third in 1989, each with great success.
Barry Shier was brought to town, fresh from the Waldorf Astoria in New York via the Nugget in Atlantic City. Shier was not a “.99 cents shrimp cocktail” kind of guy, sharing Wynn’s ambitious vision for hospitality development. He was latterly made President and CEO of the Golden Nugget.
The philosophy at the Golden Nugget was that the most efficient way to increase gaming revenues was by increasing room inventory and non-gaming offers. Many of the other properties were restrained by physical footprint and could not emulate this approach. After Frank Sinatra’s performance at the new showroom in 1985, the Nugget proved that they were a class above the competition, and they knew it.
In a tightly contested market, in order to differentiate, several casinos employed practical applications of customer segmentation.
Boyd had successfully captured loyalty from Hawaiian customers, with the Cal affectionately referred to as “the ninth island”. Binion’s loved gamblers, particularly locals. The Nugget had become a destination for slightly wealthier Californian gamblers, marketing the superiority of their amenities, sharing the poker crowd with Binion’s. Like Gaughan, his core customers came from the Mid-West, enticed by fun books and coupons, a strategy emulated by the others. It was hand-to-hand combat, with owners monitoring their competitors as closely as their own businesses.
Across the valley, Las Vegas’ population had grown from 240,000 in 1970, to 708,000 in 1990, and in 1996 it would top 1 million.
Doing something
After the various stalled projects, Mel Exber allegedly turned to Wynn and asserted that, “We need our volcano” alluding to the attraction at The Mirage that had captured the world’s attention. Shier recalled, “People travelled hundreds of miles to see The Mirage. All we needed was to get them 2.5 miles further down the road.”
Wynn’s response was to propose a “Las Venice” for Downtown, where canals would be dug into the streetscape and pedestrians could choose to peruse or cruise to singing gondoliers.
Some operators welcomed the move to do something, but many resisted both Wynn’s team’s lack of consultation and the unworkability of the concept, rejecting it entirely.
However, Wynn’s action forced the other operators to focus. It seemed the only way to get something done was a collaboration between the willing casino owners and the city. Not everyone wanted Government involvement in their businesses, but without the city’s powers, notably in enforcing eminent domain, nothing would ever happen.
Jones and Turk led the moves to bring the disparate owners together in sourcing a concept that would give customers a reason to come Downtown. The group discounted a Yellow Brick Road and Medieval Castle concepts, rather favoring an idea from Gary Goddard, where a replica Starship Enterprise would be built, bringing legions of Star Trek fans to the area.
Wynn and Shier were alarmed at this concept, but the idea moved forward, backed by other owners. Exploratory talks were had at a high level between Turk, Jones and Paramount, Star Trek’s IP holder, however the project finally stalled, and remains only as one of the more unusual moments in Las Vegas history.
Relieved by the failure of Star Trek, the Golden Nugget’s team hired Horton Plaza (and future Bellagio) architect Jon Jerde to develop an alternative. “The Jerde Plan” saw Fremont Street pedestrianized under a vaulted roof, with a Rio style floating parade. When complete, those under the canopy would be part of “the largest casino in the world.” The parties coalesced around the idea.
Jerde was hired and Golden Nugget’s Shier and Kenny Wynn led initial development of the project. However, with public funds involved, the city needed someone independent that they – and everyone else on the street – could trust.
Fresh from leaving his role as Chairman and CEO of First Interstate Bank, Don Snyder possessed a proven track record in strategically assessing problems using his adaptation of McKinsey’s 7 step model, and diplomatically achieving a series of actionable outcomes.
In a situational analysis presented in December 1992, Snyder wrote “After a long history of success, recent trends are not positive – and the outlook is not good if we just maintain the status quo in the competitively supercharged market.”
His request from the stakeholders demanded a collaborative outcome - the Jerde Plan must focus on customers, encourage private sector investment, benefit the public sector, and must be a public/private partnership.
A formula was devised for a successor to the DPA. This new entity, to be named The Fremont Street Experience, was funded by contributions from the owners, based on a room tax. Snyder was to be the CEO.
Certain owners remained suspicious. Some were hostile. The meetings were heated.
Some operators didn’t want the street pedestrianized as it would benefit the properties in central locations, limit those on the fringes, and end the frequent parades held down the street, which already brought people Downtown.
Some didn’t like the structure. Some simply resisted the dominant influence of the polarizing Wynn and harmonizing Boyd, who between them had the largest room inventory. And some just didn’t want to invest in something that didn’t directly affect their own business, although they would receive a secondary benefit of increased visitation.
Snyder and his board stood firm – either you were committed, or you walked. The disinterested Pastor was excluded. Tompkins opted out, with his property not directly under the canopy. Despite the Union Plaza’s position giving the optimal view of the street, Jackie Gaughan also departed the project, with many of the other participants offering various reasons for his exit.
Fremont Street reborn
On the warm Tuesday evening of September 6th, 1994, crowds packed the sidewalks of Fremont Street to witness a parade of vintage cars cruising down the street for a final time. The following day, Fremont Street was closed for vehicular traffic.
Just 15 months later, on December 14, 1995, thousands joined the partners to witness the canopy’s lights being turned on for the first time. Despite the naysayers in the local press, the Fremont Street Experience was an immediate hit.
Back in 1984, DTLV was generating $411m in gaming revenues. After the introduction of the canopy, annual gaming revenues remained above $600m (peaking in 1997 at $687m) until the 2008 financial crisis.
Gaming did not reach 1997’s record until the post-Covid boom of 2021 saw $701m recorded, and arrival of Circa, the first new property to the street since the Sundance.
In 2023, the LVCVA reported that 73% of first-time visitors to Las Vegas went Downtown and 54% overall. That equated to over more than 20 million tourists, which is approximate to the tourist visitation of London.
Downtown placemaking
With the benefit of perspective, Wynn and his team‘s enduring legacy was more than simple casino development. Whether at the various the Golden Nuggets, The Mirage, Bellagio, Beau Rivage, Wynn Palace in Cotai, or any other, each property became a unique destination, with placemaking and storytelling of the highest order. And customers loved it.
Not so commonly associated with Wynn’s legacy, the Fremont Street Experience – and the canopy – has become a place, more than just the intended attraction. DTLV was an alternative to the Strip for tourists, and those that were on the outside of the canopy, were on the outside of the action.
Subsequently stages, ziplines and “performers” have augmented the promenade, providing a multi-sensory cacophony to all those that participate.
Moreover, Wynn’s intuition to add amenities and hotel rooms enticed customers to stay Downtown for a vacation, rather than just come by to gamble.
The evidence of the success of this strategy, is that in 1984, prior the Nugget’s second tower opening, DTLV generated $21m in room revenues. By 1990, the year after the Nugget’s third tower opened, room revenues generated in the market were $107m. In 1997, this was $149m and in 2023 totaled $323m.
Between 1994, the year prior to the Canopy opening, to 2023, gaming revenues increased by 41% ($657m-$925m), but non-gaming revenues have grown by 149% ($322m-$802m).
New structures required
Prior to this time, many of the operators had spent years trying to keep outside influences away from their businesses, notably Government of any type. Indeed, several operators were downright hostile to the outsiders that arrived with their ambitious plans to grow the market, and even more unreceptive to the public-private-partnership model that was to be considered.
Consider the personalities. A hard-nosed, Strip-club operator like Herb Pastor.
Old school Mel Exber, who ran the betting lines when this was illegal in every other state. Pin-Stripe suited bankers Jerry Turk and Don Snyder. The very public and direct Steve Wynn, and the very private, eccentric, classical music loving, Andrew Tompkins. It would be fair to assume that not all interactions were convivial.
It was said that the older guys were the real entrepreneurs. They grew their businesses on hard work and trust, even if they were occasionally wary of each other. Indeed, some of the original operators were the first to see the opportunities that were originating in newly deregulating markets.
However, being the first – or the most headstrong – wasn’t a guarantee of success. Some of the older operators didn’t – or couldn’t – see the impact that developing a consensus between stakeholders, with a structured approach and strategy in place, could have on their businesses, preferring to plough their own path in ways that they knew.
The future of the gaming industry was set out in the collaborative experiences found in Downtown Las Vegas, where Government and gaming worked together for mutual benefit.
Building the future, Fremont out
Fremont Street in the 1990s witnessed the two generations of casino ownership working in the same place, with old school gambling operators and professionally trained executives sharing ideas.
The experience of this moment was not lost on Don Snyder. Or Bill Boyd.
Snyder served as Chairman, President & CEO of the FSE until 1996, when he joined Boyd Gaming, rising to the company’s President, overseeing an unprecedented period of growth and success for the company. The experience of the FSE stayed with Snyder as he led efforts to build the Smith Center for Performing Arts, which opened in 2012, elevating Downtown in the minds of many across the valley. He was a leading force in the reimagination of William F. Harrah College of Hospitality and the introduction of Kirk Kerkorian School
of Medicine at the UNLV, as well as serving on numerous boards in Las Vegas, including the Fremont Street Experience.
After being named Public Administrator of the Year, Bill Noonan joined Turk at Fitzgeralds, before commencing a long run as a senior executive at Boyd Gaming. He was later to serve as Chairman of the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce.
It is notable that Bill Hornbuckle, now CEO of MGM Resorts, Maurice Wooden at the Fontainebleau, recent AGA Hall of Fame inductees Alan Feldman and Debi Nutton, as well as dozens of today’s executives made their way through the Golden Nugget with Shier and Wynn.
Jack Binion sold his Horseshoe casinos to Harrah’s in 2004 and renewed his relationship with Wynn, being appointed as Chairman of Wynn Resorts in 2006, a position he held until 2018.
The properties once held by Fitzgeralds, Brandenburg and Ghelfi, Herb Pastor and Exber have all been acquired by the Stevens Brothers, several being demolished for Circa. Fitzgeralds was redeveloped and opened as ‘The D’ in 2012. Jerry Turk released an entertaining biography, “Luck, The Good Four-Letter Word” in 2024.
Brandenburg is the current Chairman of The Fremont Street Experience LLC.
Lady Luck Gaming was acquired by Isle of Capri in 2000. Andrew Tompkins died in 2004. The Lady Luck is presently operated as the Downtown Grand. The El Cortez is owned by Kenny Epstein, a longtime associate of Jackie Gaughan. Gaughan lived at a penthouse in the hotel until his passing in 2014, aged 93. The Plaza was bought by Tamares in 2005 and run by Jonathan Jossel. They remain outside of the Fremont Street Experience.
The Four Queens and Binion’s are presently operated by TLC Group, owned by former Circus Circus executive, Terry Caudill.
Jan Jones remained Mayor until 1999. She served as a senior executive at Harrah’s, then Caesars Entertainment, driving the business from a regional gaming company into one of the largest hospitality enterprises in the world. She remains one of the most admired executives and business leaders in Las Vegas.
Wynn’s legacy is evident. Rightly heralded as the industry’s greatest developer, transforming the Golden Nugget into Downtown’s leading property, (now on its third ownership group post-Wynn, it still dominates the market) transforming the Strip with The Mirage and Treasure Island, elevating the offering both in Nevada and regionally with Bellagio and Beau Rivage, building Wynn and Encore, the leading properties in modern Las Vegas, and doing the same in Macau. Boston’s Encore has followed that path on the East Coast. Wynn left the industry in 2018. Shier departed the company after the merger of Mirage Resorts with MGM in 2000.
Historic recognition
It is somewhat paradoxical that proposals to reinvent Downtown Las Vegas led to a renewal to preserve its history.
At the time, those developing the FSE had not considered the value of history to commerce and tourism, but within a year of the opening of the FSE, the city voted to fund the establishment of a Neon Museum to restore historic signage held by designers, YESCO.
Subsequently finding a physical home, the Museum has expanded to be one of the city’s most important institutions, providing both educational content about the history of Las Vegas, the inheritor of disused signage and artifacts, and an attraction in its own right.
Likewise, the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, “The Mob Museum” opened in the historic Post Office and Courthouse in 2012. It has become the repository of consciousness for a particular era in the city’s history, becoming a driver for many Strip based tourists to come Downtown.
Fremont East, the blocks located outside the canopy have emerged as an antidote to the sensory stimulus found under the lights. With neon signage required by city ordinance, the organically grown collection of bars and restaurants, proved popular with locals seeking a more urban experience found in other cities. The El Cortez, preserved under Gaughan, has found a new life with a younger customer attracted by its authenticity.
Downtown becomes uptown
One cannot place the current revival of Downtown Las Vegas with the creation of the FSE alone, although it was certainly halted the decline, prompted a revival, and formed the catalyst for much of the subsequent attention.
Gaughan’s retirement (and asset disposal, all of which was outside the canopy) proved the cause for the arrival of new investment and operators to the market. Tony Hsieh’s short and intense period of investment brought in new commerce and customers. The residential developers that met the demand for people to move back to the city, also played their part.
The Stevens Brothers studied the history of Downtown’s operators before embarking on their strategy, which led the move to monetize the street-facing exteriors and has been adopted by nearly every property in the area, notably at Binion’s and at the Plaza. Since then, Downtown’s beverage revenue has doubled to $177m in under a decade.
Over the train track at Symphony Park, thousands of new homes are occupied with more under construction. Adjacent to the Smith Center and Discovery Children’s Museum, Elaine Wynn is leading the arrival of a contemporary art gallery, advancing the cultural offer in the district, something that Jones envisioned when negotiating with Union Pacific to acquire the land parcels, decades ago, but has taken time to come to fruition.
With Simon’s Outlet Mall trading as one of the leading retail destinations in the country, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, (part of the Cleveland Clinic) and new City and County administrative buildings, Downtown is once again a commercial hub, plus the neighboring Arts and Medical Districts are seeing a large inflow of investment with thousands of residential units planned.
To paraphrase Steve Wynn’s commercial from the 1980s, today the area could easily be mistaken as uptown Las Vegas.
The canopy is approaching its 30th anniversary. It has been recently upgraded and the FSE is independently commercially viable, thanks to further revenue enhancing additions.
The outcome of the original process was by no means certain, and the enduring success of Downtown is perhaps found in the confluence of the personalities involved in the 1990s.
Jan Jones rightly credits Wynn and Shier with taking the risk, applying ambition, and creativity conceiving and implementing the project, but her own input in deal-making, perseverance, and drive played no small part. Both Noonan and Snyder highlight Bill Boyd’s ability to convey confidence and coherence to achieve consensus to proceedings, but the experienced duo themselves brought credibility, structure and strategy, conceiving practical solutions to overcome the many impediments to success. Without all these very different individuals at the same place, at the same time, history would have taken a different course.
Not only did they reinvigorate a potentially moribund casino market and initiate a revival of the city’s fortunes, but developed a generation of leaders, created the template for future projects in Las Vegas, and built models of best practice that were the foundations of some of the world’s leading gaming companies.
Historically, we remember the early 1990s as the coming of the Strip’s megaresorts, but events Downtown were just as impactful. Those that worked together didn’t just do something to meet the moment, but did something extraordinary, with outcomes that continue to have an ongoing impact to this day.