RINGING IN THE CLUBS
There’s $500,000 beneath his feet, and the man in the dusty hard hat slices through a stack of it like a kid cutting through construction paper.
Sparks fly. The angry chatter of power tools chewing into metal fills the air, which smells of sweat, sawdust and anticipation.
"That’s a half-a-million-dollar floor right there," a supervisor notes as she watches the worker slice squares of platinum tiling into an ornate design made to resemble a fancy bejeweled chain that rapper Jay-Z once wore in one of his videos.
Amid thick piles of cabling tangled up like warring pythons, buckets of paint and stack after stack of 58-inch plasma TVs, still in their boxes, a
$20 million sports lounge is taking shape, piece by piece, like the world’s most expensive jigsaw puzzle.
The 40/40 Club, located in the Palazzo, the new addition to The Venetian, is one of the ritziest ventures of its kind, a lavish rethinking of the sports bar, those garish, memorabilia-strewn hangouts that always have been the ugly ducklings of the bar circuit, normally about as chic as a weekend soft baller’s sweaty stirrups.
Expected to open Sunday, the 40/40 headlines a packed weekend of club openings at Strip properties, all replete with the kind of larger-than-life flourishes that only a handful of cities outside of Las Vegas are ever privy too.
It’s a diverse lot: There’s the hybrid restaurant/lounge CatHouse at the Luxor, the voluminous nightspot Privé at Planet Hollywood and the transformation of the popular ultra-lounge Light into The Bank at Bellagio.
In Las Vegas, the nightlife circuit always seems to be in a state of perpetual transition, and these are the newest high-end entries that will compete for crowds in 2008.
Co-owned by the aforementioned Jay-Z, the 40/40 Club is a sister property to the original New York City club of the same name. Awash in purple, gold and beige hues, the multilevel lounge is flush with 85 TVs, five 40-foot bars and a large, tiered main room, layered with plush couches, like swank bleachers.
Five VIP rooms and a 3,000-square-foot outdoor terrace round out the multipurpose venue, which doubles as a restaurant, with a capacity of 2,000.
Assorted, framed sports jerseys will line the walls in places, but for the most part, the club replaces the locker room feel of most sports pubs with a polished decor that gleams like one big walk-in trophy case.
"It’s going to be a very exquisite sports bar," says Amber King, sales manager for the 40/40 Club. "It’s definitely a twist on sports. This caters to the upscale."
Another venture coming to Las Vegas after finding success elsewhere is Privé at Planet Hollywood, which opens tonight and is the Sin City complement to the hot Miami nightspot.
"Did we come here because we said, ‘Hey, they’re not doing something in Vegas and we think we can capture the market and make a killing?’ No," says Justin Levine, managing partner of Privé, as he stands next to one of the towering pillars that support the club. "Did we come here and say, ‘Hey, they’re doing it wrong and we’re going to come here and do it Miami-style?’ No. We just came here to do what we do, which is throw parties and build the right amount of energy."
An elaborate, 12,000-square-foot space located above the casino floor on the second level of the resort, Privé is centered on a large, open main room with a 26-foot-high ceiling and an assortment of custom-made banquettes arranged on a series of multilayered crescents.
A mammoth lighting rig that looks like it was swiped from a Metallica gig grips the ceiling like a large metal spider, surrounded by a constellation of speakers driven by 48,000 watts of power.
There’s plenty of visual flourishes as well.
Upon entering the club, patrons walk down a long corridor, flanked by towering LCD screens, which culminates in a large rotunda dominated by a mammoth, 15-by-9-foot crystal lamp.
A large, concave granite bar backed by a towering fireplace opens the Greek Theatre-inspired main room, which is a broad, unfettered space with clear sightlines to the center of the club from pretty much any vantage point.
"We’ve made sure that no matter where you’re sitting, you’ve got a view of the dance floor and no one’s butt is in your face," Levine says. "You can dance on the couches, the tables, the floor, our speaker boxes, anything you want. There’s no ropes. You’re free to go wherever you want to go."
While Privé will vie to join the top-tier of Las Vegas’ self-consciously svelte nightclub circuit, a staple of those ranks, Bellagio’s Light, has undergone a face-lift, remodeled into The Bank, which opened Thursday.
The layout of the cozy, 8,000-square-foot club hasn’t changed that much — though the dance floor has been lowered, resulting in a more multitiered space — but it boasts a fresh new look, layered in a rich gold and black decor that gives The Bank the feel of an ornate, life-size jewelry box.
"We were lucky because we had 8 feet underneath Light," The Bank managing partner Jodi Myers says. "We actually built it up because Light was more of an intimate club, we didn’t want the ceilings to be so high. We were able to take that 8 feet and create two levels in some areas. The whole concept behind the club was to make sure that it really flowed and you never had a bad seat or felt like you were left out of the action. That’s why we did the levels the way we did."
The most eye-popping embellishment comes in the form of the club’s opening hallway, which is lined with dozens of bottles of the luxury champagne Cristal, encased behind illuminated infinity mirrors that silhouette each bottle, making one look like 10.
Once inside, the club pulses with dramatic smart lighting that refracts off the engraved glass railing that surrounds the dance floor, creating a translucent, three-dimensional effect.
Plasma TVs are affixed behind two-way mirrors, as is the VIP room, their shimmering surfaces matched by a shiny black reflective ceiling.
A pair of gold bars bookend the multilevel club, which is a cross between an ultra-lounge and Fort Knox.
A bit more salacious, yet no less ornate, CatHouse debuts at the Luxor on Saturday with a hybrid of lounging and fine dining by Chef Kerry Simon.
Fronted by a pair of giant red vinyl doors, the multiroom club is fashioned after a 19th-century bordello, with an entrance lined with peepholes through which classic European erotica films can be seen.
The winding, 10,000-square-foot club is divided between The Chandelier Room, a luxury bar/140-seat restaurant area with a deep red decor, polished wooden floors and plush rounded sofas, and the "Loungerie," an adjacent suite done up in cool blues and checkered with banquettes and sturdy tables upon which to dance.
Playfully libidinous, the CatHouse is enlivened by curvy vixens in lingerie who lend a theatrical air to the venue, as does a two-way mirror in The Chandelier Room, which, when illuminated, reveals a small changing room where a scantily clad gal makes herself up for the evening.
It lends the place an old world feel that contrasts with the cutting-edge gadgetry that drives a lot of this city’s high-end nightlife.
"The theme was about this rich, opulent space that people would gather in and feel like they’re high society and upper class and create that in a comfortable setting that wasn’t focused on the brand new digital projections on the wall and all this crazy technology," says CatHouse operation partner Nick Landazuri.
A bit more preoccupied with flesh-and-blood flourishes, the CatHouse is a fittingly hot-under-the-collar addition to this heavy-breathing weekend of club openings.
"It’s exciting," Landazuri says of the flurry of new properties debuting in the next couple of days. "None of them are head to head or similar projects or anything. They’re all very different. It just goes to show how Vegas changes on such a regular basis."
Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin @reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0476.
