Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

New gaming spaces, restaurants underline Cosmopolitan’s ongoing transformation

Cosmopolitan sports book

Courtesy

The Cosmopolitan sports book offers a center bar, video poker, shuffleboard and pool tables.

At this moment in his career, Bill McBeath at once looks up to Steve Wynn and down on his famous designs.

McBeath’s office at the Cosmopolitan overlooks the fountains of the Bellagio. It’s a nice view, certainly inspirational and even nostalgic, of one of Wynn’s greatest achievements.

“I think he is the modern-day Walt Disney,” McBeath says of Wynn from his perch in that Cosmopolitan office, the water show in full flourish far below. “Steve has never been satisfied with the status quo, and he broke the business model when he opened the Mirage in 1989. … He inspires me tremendously; he instilled in me and embedded in me a lot of my operating style, and almost all of my design sensibilities.”

Click to enlarge photo

Cosmopolitan President and CEO Bill McBeath.

So it’s a case of the pupil ascending to compete with the master. Since the 1990s, McBeath has served as president of Treasure Island, Mirage, Bellagio and Aria. He left the latter in 2012, telling MGM Resorts officials he was reassessing his career goals. And in December 2014 he resurfaced amid high expectations as the president of Cosmopolitan.

Not one to simply baby-sit, McBeath has made significant changes: Cosmopolitan has bolstered its already industry-leading restaurant lineup with the addition of Beauty & Essex (a partnership with Tao Group and chef/restaurateur Chris Santos) and Eggslut (the walk-up diner out of L.A.), and the announcement of Momofuku (the Michelin two-star noodle restaurant founded by David Chang) and Milk Bar to open this year. In a stroke of luck, Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi earned a James Beard Award for Best Pastry Chef just a week after the partnership with the Cosmo was announced.

Elsewhere, the hotel is renovating its Chandelier bar (to reopen in August) and is shifting the design and focus of its casino floor. In December it debuted a high-limit slot lounge (as McBeath was peeved that the hotel had no area reserved strictly for high-wagering slot players), as well as custom cocktail lounge Clique in the former Book & Stage space. Its Talon Club for the hotel’s most exclusive table-game players was expanded in February, and a high-limit room for table games is opening this month.

The transformation is ongoing, as McBeath and Cosmopolitan ownership company Blackstone Real Estate Partners present the resort as a moving target. In this interview, McBeath touched on myriad topics. The highlights:

Slots might not be sexy, but:

“In the past, as you’re building this cool, hip brand that had this hedonistic backdrop to it with these incredibly powerful ads, ‘slot’ was a four-letter word,” McBeath says. “It’s incongruent with that message. Slot people aren’t cool and hip and, you know. … So for me it’s like, look, you can’t be the ostrich with your head in the sand, saying, ‘We don’t care about slots; whatever they do is gravy.’ That’s crazy.”

McBeath created a slot division and hired longtime colleague Kevin Sweet as vice president of slot operations and marketing. New position, new emphasis. The hotel had previously sent high-limit gaming customers to a combined slot/table-game room. “These are two diametrically opposed customers in terms of what they want in the same room, and you’re not really serving either one,” McBeath says. “If you’re going to be in this business, you have to commit to it or go home.”

Las Vegas still “differentiates” itself in the international tourism community:

“People can travel to world-class hotels anywhere in the world, but you can’t get the critical mass of world-class hotels and gaming in the same environment anywhere other than Las Vegas. Macau is trying to get there, but even with that, when they are fully mature there will be 15 hotels. There are 156,000 room nights here. I think having that critical mass of all these great assets, great brands and great operators is what makes Vegas such an attractive destination.”

The casino is like a Monopoly board:

“Every casino has its Boardwalk, Park Place and Pennsylvania Avenue. And every casino floor has its Marvin Gardens. This casino was almost all Marvin Gardens, and the areas that were Park Place and Boardwalk were programmed incorrectly.”

Such as …

“We had Book & Stage, our race and sports-book bar, that had live entertainment, taking up an 8,000-square-foot footprint in the heart of the casino and really underperforming. We had these giant banquettes and metal stools that you couldn’t sit on. … And we had a sports book on the second floor, across from a restaurant, that had no seating area and no true sports-book lounge. It was just a transaction zone.

Click to enlarge photo

Clique lounge

So those spaces issues were corrected:

“We tore out Book & Stage and dedicated Clique to take 45 percent of the footprint, because we just needed a cool place to have a really cold drink and conversation, and we built this new, high-limit destination slot room,” McBeath says. “Our commitment to play in that space was the biggest game-changer we have had.”

The southeast corner of the casino was used for the new-and-improved sports book. “We extended the casino experience into this space, where we had 135 (slot) units, underperforming, and designed a race and sports book with a bar in the center. Something that would be appealing to anyone who wants a socialized experience, with pool tables and 22 video-poker machines that make more money than the 135 games they displace. The handle on the sports book has doubled, and the slots and beverage handle is great. We took this giant, dead Marvin Gardens space and at least put it close to a Pennsylvania Avenue.”

One day, entertainment will return to the Rose. Rabbit. Lie. showroom:

The theater at RRL has sat dormant since “Vegas Nocturne” bugged out in July 2014. McBeath and his team have entertained a wide variety of concepts and sent officials across the country to scout shows.

“I’ve never stopped thinking about how to program Rose. Rabbit. Lie., but I also know that it was a failure as a combined entertainment-supper club venue,” says McBeath, who actually was authorized to close the venue completely, but instead cut ties with operating partner Coastal Luxury Management in January 2015. “The first thing we did was fire the operating partner — and if we do that, we’ll make money by managing this restaurant ourselves … and the food in there is as good as anything we have at the hotel, as good as anything there is in town. It’s an incredibly cool, vibrant venue and it is making money.”

However:

“The showroom needs to have a dedicated entertainment policy, and I don’t think that room can take two train wrecks in a row,” McBeath says. “I have to be very confident of what we do in there. As you know, there is no guarantee for success in any entertainment policy. I went through two shows that closed in my old life, with ‘Viva Elvis’ and ‘Zarkana.’ We’ll find something in there. Nothing is off the table, and it will be something where the economics work for all parties.”

As a sort of parting shot, the Cosmo’s chief added, “It has to be a good deal. To quote Steve, ‘It’s easy to do a bad deal, because there are so many of them out there.’ That voice resonates in the back of my mind every time I sit down and look at what we’re planning.”

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy