The Mirage wasn’t just another opening — it was the first new casino Las Vegas had seen in 17 years. The city had been waiting for something bold, something that broke the pattern. Steve Wynn believed the time had come. A $650 million price tag. A promise of a new standard. A vision so ambitious that even seasoned operators wondered if the market could sustain it.
And the doubters were loud. A property that needed to generate more than a million dollars a day in revenue? Impossible, they said. Unsustainable. Reckless.
But inside the organization, Wynn’s conviction was steadying. He made you feel like the impossible was simply the next logical step. So we focused. We prepared. We built something we believed in.
Opening day — Wednesday, November 22, 1989 — arrived with a kind of electricity you could feel in your chest. The day before, Wynn worried the crowd might be too small. By 5 p.m., at the ribbon‑cutting with Siegfried and Roy and their white tigers, nearly 35,000 people were pressed against the entrance, waiting to see if the inside matched the spectacle of the volcano outside.
By midnight, more than 55,000 had poured through the doors.
At one point, Wynn turned and asked — only half joking — whether we should install turnstiles to control the surge. That’s how overwhelming the demand was. That’s how clearly the market answered the doubters.
And the million‑dollar‑a‑day question? The casino hit it. Consistently.
That opening didn’t just validate the vision — it ignited a building boom. New resorts, new jobs, new residents, new neighborhoods. For nearly two decades, Las Vegas expanded on the belief that if you build something extraordinary, people will come.
We tried to become better than we were, and suddenly everyone else was doing the same. That’s the quiet power of leadership: when you raise your standards, the world around you rises too.
Dream big. Back your vision with a real plan and a team that believes. And then step forward with courage today.
Paulo Coelho de Souza (born 1947): Brazilian lyricist, novelist (The Alchemist), and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
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