If I'm being profiled in the Wall Street Journal as the potential saviour of a fading Vegas casino, I'd want the kind of portrait they've given Sam Nazarian, new owner of the down-at-heel Sahara Hotel & Casino (where...eeek..."life-size Arab figures pull a row of cheesy plaster camels").
True, I'd like it to make me look 32 rather than 42 but otherwise, it's perfect.
Nazarian is the supremo of Los Angeles' evening entertainment for young people ("he and his PR handlers cringe at the term 'nightclub king'") who now seeks to weave his magic on the Rat Pack's last surviving watering hole.
"The usual Vegas style of renovation is implosion: the Sands leveled for the Venetian; the Dunes razed for the Bellagio. There is no other way, the reasoning goes, to compete with the Strip's new luxury casinos and hotels. But Mr. Nazarian has built his reputation on converting rundown pockets of real estate into trendy, A-list magnets. His company, SBE Entertainment Group LLC, and private-investment partner Stockbridge Capital, bought the 18-acre Sahara property last year for about $300 million. Mr. Nazarian won't say how much he will spend on rehabilitation; plans include a new hotel tower and a makeover of the hotel's 1,700 rooms. 'There's not one part of this property we're not touching,' he says."British readers studying the hotel's website may smile wistfully at what America regards as 'down-at-heel' but so be it: if injecting class into his latest acquisition is Sam's top priority, let me simply mention that the Sahara's advertising strategy should be high on his schedule...
[Nazarian photo - Robert Gallagher/Wonderful Machine; illustration - Sean McCabe]





