Wynning Streak

Steve Wynn’s return to the Las Vegas Strip has taken a quick climb. While the casino developer is one month away from opening the doors to Wynn Las Vegas, he just announced plans for another mega-resort right next door.

Wynn sold his Vegas properties – including Bellagio, Mirage and Treasure Island – to Kirk Kerkorian’s MGM Grand Inc. in 2000. Wynn Las Vegas has been in the works since 2002 and plans originally called for a hotel tower to be included.

Now, Wynn has decided to change that hotel tower into the centerpiece of a new project called Encore in an effort to compete with 10 Vegas properties run by MGM Mirage, according to The Wall Street Journal. The $1.4 billion project is expected to emerge in 2008 with 2,300 swank hotel rooms and there is talk of a high-tech concert hall.

Details were sketchy, but the concert hall is to include technology that will allow the seats to disappear into a 10-foot cavity. The floor can then be used for conventions.

“I haven’t picked the carpeting and I can’t show you the door to the kitchen,” Wynn joked to WSJ.

The entrepreneur is also expanding his new casino in Macau, adding five acres to the 11-acre site under development, the paper said.