Remember south Strip expansion? Resorts World wants to bring it north

Before talking of his new role on the north Strip, Jim Murren recalls growth to the south.

The new chairman of the board of Resorts World refers to the company Circus Circus Enterprises. Not the old hotel-casino, but the former umbrella company that caused a stir by building a mega-resort on the south Strip more than 25 years ago.

“Circus Circus, when it was a public company, before it renamed itself Mandalay Resort Group, worked hard to develop the south end of the Strip,” Murren says during a Thursday-afternoon lounge chat at Ocean Prime at 63 CityCenter. “They anchored the south Strip with Mandalay Bay, which dramatically helped Luxor and Excalibur. It improved the entire neighborhood.”

This being Las Vegas, you never know in which neighborhood you’ll run into a top-level executive.

The conversation with Murren was highly unexpected. The ex-MGM Resorts International exec attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the opening of Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Bar at 63 CityCenter.

Aldean and his wife, Brittany; and Clark County commissioner Jim Gibson were also in the crew of cutters. So was Murren. He was in the entourage as a friend of Vegas developer Brett Torino, whose Torino Companies co-owns the CityCenter property, along with Flag Luxury Group.

Murren has no business interest in CityCenter. But he used to. The veteran Vegas resorts official was CEO of MGM Resorts International when CityCenter was developed. The very location on which Aldean’s is at was supposed to be the the Harmon, the structurally compromised highrise planned for CityCenter that went unfinished and was halted in 2009.

Murren left MGM Resorts more than a decade later just ahead of the pandemic shutdown in February 2020. He led the task force assigned by then-Gov. Steve Sisolak to coordinate public-private response to COVID-19.

K.T.’s calling

Murren says he took a call two months ago from K.T. Lim, Genting Berhad’s chairman and CEO and Resorts World’s top executive. The resort has been beleaguered by financial struggles and allegations of operational violations by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

“They were quite surprised and concerned about what has been happening here,” Murren says. “So they asked me to come in and helped form a board, which we have done.”

The result is Resorts World has buttressed its familiarity with Las Vegas resort management. Incoming CEO Alex Dixon is a native Las Vegan with tenures at MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. Murren says of Resorts World CFO Peter Lavoie, “He worked at MGM forever, and he’s probably the smartest financial mind in Las Vegas. He’s a great CFO.”

Murren is too early in his tenure to delve into specific initiatives at Resorts World. But he knows the territory.

“We intend to continue to expand the property, to evolve the property,” Murren said. “It’s a blank canvas, outside of the land it sits on. It owns over 40 acres of undeveloped land. There’s so much more that can be done there.”

An icon’s influence

Murren was hired at MGM in 1998. He considers the resort visionary Kirk Kerkorian, who presided over MGM at the time, a mentor.

“I loved Mr. Kerkorian more than anyone, other than my father,” Murren says. “He gave so much to this community, yet he was humble. He was an old-school kind of guy, very respectful, and one of his dear friends was K.T. Lim.”

Murren said he feels the Kerkorian-Lim relationships still today.

“When K.T. called me, it felt good,” Murren said. “I don’t know how to describe that feeling, but it felt like it was connective tissue with Mr. Kerkorian and the founders of Las Vegas.”

Murren said from Kerkorian he learned a community approach to Las Vegas expansion. He refers to Steve Wynn’s decision in March 2000 to buy the Desert Inn.

“Steve Wynn as an individual, wanted to buy the Desert Inn, but he could not buy the Desert Inn unless MGM allowed him to do it, because he was still chairman and CEO of MGM Resorts,” Murren said. “So Steve Wynn called me, which I’m sure he loved because I was just a punk kid. This was way beyond my pay grade, so I called Mr. Kerkorian, and I said, ‘Steve Wynn wants to buy the Desert Inn and needs our approval. What should we do?’”

Murren said Kerkorian’s response was “immediate.”

“He said, ‘What’s good for Las Vegas, is good for MGM,’” Murren said. “Anyone that can bring intellectual and financial capital to our community to create investment in jobs, is good for MGM. Of course, we’re going to allow Steve Wynn to buy the Desert Inn.”

Which was demolished to created the gold-standard, twin towers of Wynn/Encore – across the Strip from Resorts World.

The high-tide effect

Murren said he views resorts competing for Resorts World’s customers the same way Kerkorian would.

“Fontainebleau is a great example of investment in the north Strip, and it certainly is going to help the (Las Vegas) Convention Center,” Murren said. “I’m friends with the Fontainebleau guys. I’m rooting them. I’m rooting everybody in Las Vegas.”

The north end of the Strip “needs help,” Murren says.

“The north Strip hs some pockets of excellence, but it needs to be filled in with more development to create the type of pedestrian circulation that you get in the center Strip and the South strip,” Murren says. “People just don’t walk up and down the northern part of the Strip right now, there’s not enough for them to do and see.”

Invoking his former colleagues at MGM Resorts, Murren evokes yet another example of Las Vegas synergy, T-Mobile Arena, which MGM Resorts co-owns with AEG. The venue was constructed on MGM Resorts property between New York-New York and the then-Monte Carlo, known as today’s Park MGM.

The parcel was occupied by a CityCenter sales office and construction offices. Las Vegas gaming icon Tony Marnell II had the idea to build a mixed-use arena on that site.

“He said, ‘That’s the perfect place for an arena,’” Murren said. “We could have called it MGM Arena. We owned the land. MGM owns a piece of it, MGM developed it, MGM runs it, but nobody views it as an MGM property. All the other casinos bought suites and have been involved with the Golden Knights, of course.”

Murren said expect that type of overarching vision to be in his strategy on the north Strip.

“That’s my philosophy around Resorts World,” Murren said. “Anything I could do to help further the community and build bridges between the other properties, I’m just honored to do.”

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on X, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.