Of marketing and mud pies: How Larry Ruvo recruited Frank Gehry

By John Katsilometes

Friday, Feb. 26, 2010 | 2:53 p.m.

Larry Ruvo is all about packaging and marketing. As the head of Southern Wine & Spirits of Nevada, he once related the power of marketing by using the analogy of two vodka bottles on a shelf.

One is Grey Goose. One is not. We'll call it, "Fred's Vodka." Assume they are precisely alike in every way that matters in vodka consumption. They are made of pure spring water and the highest quality of grains. But the typical customer will gaze at those bottles — considering Grey Goose or Fred's — and almost without fail pluck the Grey Goose.

Why? Because Grey Goose has made a name for itself with a multimillion-dollar worldwide marketing campaign.

Fred's, sadly, has not.

Ruvo has used his marketing acumen to "package" the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. "I was using the vodkas as an analogy of Frank Gehry," Ruvo said, remembering a conversation from a year ago during a recent episode of the KUNV 91.5-FM talk show I host, "Our Metropolis." Ruvo hosts his annual Keep Memory Alive "Power of Love" Gala on Saturday at Bellagio. Barry Manilow, soon to be headlining at Paris Las Vegas, will perform for the hundreds of Vegas dignitaries at one of the year's more power-packed fundraisers.

"I think of the evolution of what is happening now, our project has worldwide acclaim and recognition," Ruvo continued. "It's packaging with the ultimate reason for the packaging and marketing to cure disease. ... When you have Frank Gehry involved, peopled know you are serious. This is a commitment."

But as Ruvo recalled, the star architect was not immediately enthralled with stamping his name on a structure in Las Vegas. Ruvo met with Gehry at Gehry's Los Angeles office during the preliminary task of lopping a list of 20 renowned architects down to one.

For Ruvo, the meeting started stiffly, akin to tossing back a shot of crummy tequila.

"We had this meeting, and (Gehry's) opening statement was, 'I'm not going to build a building in Las Vegas,' " Ruvo said. "And I looked at him as he was sitting in his chair and said, 'You're either a rude man or just nasty. Why would I fly down here? You gave me 45 minutes. I want the 45 minutes.'

"I mean, I grew up here. This is my city. I'm a Nevadan. I love Las Vegas."

The ice having been broken with a sharpened verbal pick, the meeting unfolded less confrontationally as the two men shared stories of their backgrounds. The scheduled 45 minutes bloomed to three hours.

"He understood what I wanted to do, and I said that it would be a shame if he didn't use his celebrity to help find a cure for a disease," Ruvo said. "But his other reason (for being reluctant to build here) wasn't that he didn't like Las Vegas. He grew up in Toronto. His father was in the slot-machine business, was a route salesman for the old Mills company, and he didn't like the stigma of slot machines."

But Ruvo is great at dispelling stigmas.

"My immediate response was, 'Well, in this day and age, unless you're building it in Utah or Hawaii, all other states all having gaming. It's a legitimate business. This is not something that has a stigma,' " Ruvo said, adding the coup de grâce, a reference to Gehry's famous Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. "If that's the case, there are Indian casinos in California. You should stop building at the Disney Center."

Well played, sir.

"So we had a really good meeting. ... But I thought I needed some reinforcements, so I brought my wife, Camille," Ruvo said. "Frank looked at her and said, 'Did you ever make mud pies when you were young?' She said, 'Of course.' He said, 'Well, you never make mud pies with someone you don't like. I want to make mud pies with your husband.'"

Two weeks later, Gehry called Ruvo and made it official. Today the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, across from World Market Center in the newly renamed Symphony Park near downtown Las Vegas, is nearly finished. The gala grand opening is April 1, a date Ruvo selected as a jab at those who thought he was a fool to embark on such a far-flung medical and architectural project. It's quite a mud pie.

Meanwhile, across the parking lot ...

Thursday afternoon marked the topping-off ceremony for the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, which sits just north of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center in Symphony Park. Founder Fred W. Smith joined Smith Center execs Don Snyder and Myron Martin and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman onstage as cranes hoisted and placed a 101,000-pound (or, 50-ton) steel beam assemblage atop the project. Inside, visitors were given the first tour of the stage and concert hall's seating configuration, which is still a skeleton of the grand 2,050-seat hall that will host performances by the Las Vegas Philharmonic and Nevada Ballet Theatres and all array of touring productions and concerts.

About one-third completed, the Smith Center is scheduled to open in the spring of 2012. Goodman announced the official name change of the street where the Center stands, from Discovery Drive to Symphony Park Avenue. The address, 361, is a tribute to the March (the month) and 1961 (the year), when Fred W. Smith married Mary B. Smith. Fred Smith paused onstage, feeling the emotion of recalling his late wife. Snyder and Martin, too, halted when talking of the spectacular project, and Martin stammered before quickly passing the mic for a few words from Goodman, who joked, "What? Nobody here thinks I can feel emotion?"

Las Vegas City Councilmen Ricki Barlow, Stavros Anthony and Steve Wolfson and Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian were in the audience. So was former Las Vegas Councilman and current County Commissioner Lawrence Weekly, who during his days on the Council supported the Smith Center project, located in Ward 5. Harrah's Chief Executive Officer Gary Loveman, former Nevada Gov. and Sen. Richard Bryan and LV Phil Conductor David Itkin were also on hand.

A parting shot from Goodman: When asked which performance he'd like to see opening the Smith Center, he said, "How about the Eroica Symphony?" he said, referring to the thundering Beethoven piece. "I'd like to have some cannons blasting."

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