More than eight years after he was forced out of the gaming industry, Steve Wynn stepped back onto a casino floor he once controlled and spent nearly two hours owning a sold-out room.
On October 22, 600 people packed the Golden Nugget showroom for “Reflections of The Mirage: A Conversation with Steve Wynn,” part of the Neon Museum’s annual Duck Duck Shed celebration. The setting couldn’t have been more fitting. Wynn ran the Golden Nugget from 1973 to 1989, turning the old downtown joint into one of Nevada’s top resorts before he set his sights on the Strip and detonated the Mirage.
Now 84 and legally blind from retinitis pigmentosa, Wynn walked the audience through the birth of the resort that rewrote Las Vegas forever. At the time, a $630 million megaresort sounded insane. Critics — and plenty of competing casino bosses — were convinced it would collapse under its own operating costs. A Forbes reporter even told him the industry consensus was that the whole thing was doomed. When the magazine hit stands, the headline was pure shade: “Snake Eyes for Steve.”
Wynn says those doubts died the moment the doors opened on November 22, 1989.
“The place was profitable in the first 60 minutes it existed,” he told the crowd.
Opening day was pure chaos. Fifty to sixty thousand people flooded the property. Everything hit capacity immediately. Standing next to a Wall Street Journal reporter, Wynn was asked how long it would take to break even. His answer: “It already is. It’s in the black.”
Within 36 hours, Strip land values roughly doubled as rivals scrambled to catch up. The 3,044-room Mirage is widely credited with kicking off the 1990s megaresort boom and setting the standard for everything that followed.
According to Wynn, those concerns evaporated almost immediately after The Mirage opened on Nov. 22, 1989.
“The place was profitable in the first 60 minutes it existed,” he told the audience.
Wynn described opening day as a scene of near chaos, with tens of thousands of visitors pouring into the resort.
“Everything went to capacity,” he said. “Fifty to sixty thousand people came the first day.”
Standing beside a reporter from The Wall Street Journal, Wynn recalled being asked how long it would take for the property to break even.
“I said, ‘It already is. It’s in the black.’”
According to Wynn, land values on the Strip roughly doubled within 36 hours, as competitors scrambled to pursue expansion projects of their own. The 3,044-room Mirage is widely credited with helping trigger a development boom that transformed the Strip during the 1990s and established a new standard for megaresorts.
The House That Almost Beat the House
Surprisingly, Wynn said the greatest obstacle to building The Mirage was not financing. It was a small house owned by a 91-year-old former vaudeville performer and actress.
Grace Hayes steadfastly refused to sell the home she had shared with her husband, screenwriter Robert E. Hopkins, who died there in 1966. Her residence became the last privately owned home on the Las Vegas Strip after she turned down repeated offers from developers, including Howard Hughes.
“She said, ‘I’ll never sell Hoppy’s house,’” Wynn recalled.
The land sat where Wynn envisioned one of The Mirage’s signature attractions. The concept initially called for a waterfall, but that changed after renowned lighting designer David Hersey pointed out a practical problem.
“You can’t light a waterfall,” Wynn said Hersey told him. “The light goes right through it.”
The waterfall became a volcano.
Wynn said Hayes finally relented after he showed her a scale model of the project. He recalled taking her by wheelchair to view the model.
“Oh my God, Steve,” he recalled her saying. “It’s beautiful. It’s so big. There’s nothing like that here.”
His sales pitch likely wasn’t hurt by the reported purchase price. He had to pay $2 million for the small house and the adjacent parcel, on which the Grace Hayes Lodge (formerly the Red Rooster, the very first Strip casino ever licensed), once stood.
Wynn also allowed Hayes to spend her remaining years in a luxury suite at the Golden Nugget. She died in 1989 at age 93, the same year The Mirage opened.
During his talk, Wynn also reflected on other decisions that came to define the resort, including signing illusionists Siegfried & Roy and establishing a dolphin habitat in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The attraction later became a regular destination for Clark County marine biology students and, in Wynn’s view, stood among the property’s most enduring achievements.
A Controversial Return
The event drew criticism because Wynn’s career ended amid allegations of sexual misconduct that surfaced in a 2018 investigation by The Wall Street Journal.
Wynn resigned as chairman and chief executive of Wynn Resorts in February 2018 and has consistently denied allegations that he harassed or assaulted women. He was never criminally charged and has consistently denied harassing or assaulting anyone.
Before the event, critics including Casino.org’s own Vital Vegas questioned the Neon Museum’s decision to feature Wynn.
“Steve Wynn making an appearance at a Las Vegas casino is problematic to say the least,” Vital Vegas wrote when tickets to this event went on sale in August 2026. “There’s a reason Steve Wynn is banned from Wynn Resorts. Wynn’s alleged victims won’t forget, and neither should you.”
Nevada gaming regulators fined Wynn Resorts $20 million in 2019 for failures related to the company’s handling of misconduct complaints. In response, the company overhauled its leadership structure, added women to its board of directors, replaced executives and employees tied to reporting failures, and implemented governance reforms.
Wynn’s settlement with regulators bars him from involvement in Nevada’s gaming industry, though it does not prohibit public appearances or entry into casinos.
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Rephrased by The Mystic Gambler