Elvis and the Colonel by Greg McDonald

Author:Greg McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

13

Viva Las Vegas

Kirk Kerkorian, the airline, real estate, and hotel tycoon, had just built the International Hotel, two blocks off the famed Las Vegas Strip on Paradise Road. The International was to be the largest convention-oriented hotel in the world.

In early 1967, Kerkorian purchased the Las Vegas Downs horse track, which was located on eight acres of prime real estate directly adjacent to the mammoth, county-owned Las Vegas Convention Center. Critics thought he was crazy to build a major gaming property that far off the Strip. Las Vegas had been built on high rollers, nickel slot players, top-name entertainment, and $1.95 dinner buffets. The days of huge conventions of fifty thousand to seventy-five thousand conventioneers were far in the future, but Kerkorian saw them coming.

He quickly put together an expert staff to operate his $60-million, thirty-story hotel, which would open in less than two years. (By contrast, Kerkorian’s 5,000-room MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas that opened in the early ’90s and cost $1.85 billion.) His first step was to hire Alex Shoofey, the very successful executive vice president of Del Webb’s Sahara hotel to run the hotel side of the 1,519-room project. Jimmy Newman, a longtime, highly respected gaming executive, was named vice president of casino operations.

Shoofey then raided his own staff and hired seventy-three Sahara executives and key staff members to form the nucleus of the International’s staff. Kerkorian’s next move was a masterpiece in pre-planning. He bought Bugsy Siegel’s pride and joy, the rundown 777-room Flamingo hotel located in the middle of the Strip, directly across from glitzy Caesars Palace, to use as a training site for his entire International staff.

The plan at that point was to sell the Flamingo in 1969 and move all its employees into the International just prior to opening. However, the innovative team of Shoofey and Newman spent about $2 million remodeling and turned the twenty-year-old property around, making it into a big moneymaker. Kerkorian decided to keep the Flamingo, causing considerable problems for the staff. Instead of picking up and moving into the International a month before opening, the entire executive staff had to find replacements for themselves and their staffs to continue running the Flamingo. Recruiting offices were opened from Miami to San Francisco. The Las Vegas market was not large enough at that time to handle so many new jobs.

One of the key features at the International Hotel would be its main showroom—the largest room of its kind in the world, with 1,500 seats, including a balcony. It would also feature the finest light and sound systems. The mammoth stage was sixty feet wide and more than two hundred feet deep, and it was designed to handle both superstars and major production shows. Even the doors leading into the huge dressing rooms in the basement were ten feet high to permit showgirls through with their large, feathered headpieces.

“I want to headline only the biggest names in the business in the showroom,” Kerkorian told Shoofey. “And I mean new faces

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