The Wynn Golf Club, slated for destruction not too long ago, is getting a new lease on life.
The high-end course, located just off the Las Vegas Strip behind Wynn Resorts’ Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, was closed late last year to make way for Steve Wynn’s highly touted Wynn Paradise: a $3 billion complex of hotel rooms, convention facilities, dining and outdoor activities and nightlife centered around a 38-acre lagoon and a white sand beach.
The company’s new leadership has different plans. The 400,000-square-foot convention center is still a go, but that’s it.
“We weren’t really interested in building a large public swimming pool for the Las Vegas Strip,” CEO Matt Maddox told analysts on a recent earnings call𑁋especially with the company’s purchase earlier this year of 38 vacant acres across the Strip𑁋a “far superior site,” he said, for a third hotel and other attractions.
That means the Golf Club and its 130 acres of manicured, and very pricey, fairways and greens will reopen for a select clientele that can afford fees that top out at $500 for a round.
“Not only did we notice we lost 16,000 rounds of golf out there, 70 percent of which were cash, but we probably lost $10 million to $15 million worth of domestic casino business—people coming in for golf trips who decided to go elsewhere,” Maddox said. “It’s a great amenity for the resort.”
The company has reached out to Tom Fazio, the course’s designer, to take a look at the holes displaced by construction of the convention center with the aim of designing 18 new holes connected to Wynn Las Vegas and Encore and have it all ready to play before the convention center opens in 12 to 18 months.
Said Maddox, “The design of that is complete, the work has commenced, and the golf course will be restored and back in action by this time next year.”
