Sometime around Valentine’s Day, “Nevada Newsmakers” aired two interviews with Paul Steelman. Steelman is an architect working in the casino industry; indeed, it might be said he is the architect of the gaming industry. Steelman’s projects range from the Mirage on the Strip and Circa in downtown Las Vegas to Macau and Dubai. He has consulted with government leaders around the country and the world and lectured on casino design. Sam Shad did the interviews in his now-legendary conversational style.
Shad started “Nevada Newsmakers” in 2002. He came to Reno in 1978 to work in radio. In time he became a television weatherman and later an interviewer. The “Newsmakers” name for the program came from those days, the name of a Reno television program with Sam Shad doing interviews with local leaders. After he left television, Shad started doing radio interviews. Sam tried to be polite and friendly even when asking difficult questions. As the majority of his interviewees are politicians, that is an important characteristic. In an interview conducted by Mike Draper in 2024, Shad said that the key to a successful interview was making it a conversation, not a series of scripted questions.
Over the course of his career, Sam has interviewed key leaders in politics, education, and business. The business category includes gaming. Regularly, key gaming journalists discuss the latest news and trends in gaming, giving depth and context to the day’s headlines. Shad is always well informed on the issues, giving the program a sense of a discussion, not typical of media interviews. With his own background in media, the interviews are like newsroom discussions of the day’s events. Sam is just one of the reporters sitting around, discussing current stories and planning future ones.
His conversational style and knowledge of the subject were evident in the interview with Paul Steelman. It was a chat about gaming, the people who were its visionaries, their ideas, style, and creations. Steelman knew and worked with Kirk Kirkorian, Shelden Adelson, Sol Kerzner, Steve Wynn, Derek Stevens, and more. His stories about Wynn and the Mirage are fascinating and insightful. Everyone has wondered how Wynn managed to pull it off in 1989 with the Mirage. It cost more to build than any other casino before it. The pundits doubted that it would survive, much less prosper. No one except Wynn and his team believed in the project. Steelman knows why Wynn projects succeeded.
“First off, what did Steve Wynn always do in the lobby? One emotion: Wow! That’s what we need to do in the lobby. We don’t need to do that in a casino. Casinos don’t need the wow factor. In the casino, we have to make you feel like James Bond.” Steelman had similar insights into the character and successes of Kirkorian, Adelson, Kerzner, and Stevens. Listening to Paul and Sam talk was like sitting in the room with those industry giants and being a part of the history of gaming. It was also a master class on casinos and Las Vegas.
Steelman knows what it takes to make Las Vegas work. “The Las Vegas formula is interesting. We have a lot of rules about that. But if we had one thought, that thought was to pique the curiosity of the guest to explore the building. We want to pique the curiosity of the guest and we want to satisfy their emotions, their emotional needs for architecture and design within that design.”
Las Vegas is a favorite topic for the architect. For one thing, he says he is frequently asked to help create a Las Vegas somewhere else. Steelman says that people all over the world dream of the same thing, the Las Vegas Strip. “Everyone wants Las Vegas, but they don’t quite follow the formula.” He says they always hold back on something or are simply missing one of the key elements in regulation and government.
“They don’t have the government. They don’t have Steve Hill at the Convention Center. They don’t have low taxes. They don’t have a development-friendly government. So they all want it. But then they pull back.” That is a master class at the highest level. In one short quote, Steelman tells people what makes Las Vegas successful. It has the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority with a huge budget and willingness to promote the city and gaming. It has an industry and development-friendly government structure. And it has a low tax on gaming.
The tax rate is really the key to the Strip. Due to Nevada’s gaming tax rate, casinos in Las Vegas are constantly reinvesting, expanding, trying new ideas, and simply dreaming. Contrast that with Pennsylvania, for example. Pennsylvania takes over half of the revenue from gaming. That leaves very little left over for upkeep, expanding, or experimenting with new ideas. Pennsylvania does collect more gaming tax than Nevada. But it does not have the billions and billions of dollars invested in one short section of one street in Las Vegas. It does not have hundreds of thousands of people employed in gaming. It does not have any of the other secondary sources of economic activity that gaming generates in Nevada.
Las Vegas is a complete package. Just ask Paul Steelman or Sam Shad. Sam now has the keys to kingdom too.
