The Manhattan Mercury from Manhattan, Kansas • 27

-Siindav. 1984 The Manhattan Mercury Cll Alexis Park offers elegance amid Vegas glitter By JERRY HULSE lobby, a 20-vear-old former beautv fancy Beverly Hills-style canopies and unveiled a lobby that smacks of contestant from Virginia makes dinnehand nightclub reservations for the hoteKsbig spenders. Meanwrhje, their wives are chauffeured "around town to fashion shows hosted by the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue. OneJiigh roller's frau bought $10 orth of quarters recently and hit a jackpot that paid her wealth. No roulette, no craps tables.

There's not even a single slot machine in sight. Just tons of marble, beveled glass, Gay '90s chandeliers, banks of mums and a red carpet down which the likes of Frank Sinatra and Willie Nelson stroll to entertain the Nugget's customers. The hotel spends $40,000 a month on flowers and operates a fleet of stretched limousines for the pleasure of whales (high rollers) who occupy those 27 spectacular suites in the new tower, and it's all on the house. Butlers, maids, bartenders. Just ring, babv.

At the VIP desk in the $196,000. Besides tne limousines. wynn owns a jet that's used on occasion Weather the high rollers from cities andiowns across the nation. Wynn, 42, self- assured, echoes the words of his flack the Nugget surely is an oasis in the center of all that obnoxious neon. the cabbie to take you to the Golden Nugget.

In downtown Las Vegas? Glitter Gulch? Affirmative. As anyone who has ever set foot in Las Vegas knows, downtown is not exactly Bel-Air or Palm Beach. It's more like Tijuana with roulette and blackjack. Enough neon is burned each 24 hours to light up a Third World nation. Signs that flash with names like "Trader Bill's," "Discount Souvenirs" and "Sassy Sally's." The Nugget, though, is an exception.

As the hotel's flack put it: "It's an oasis, a little island." Yes, of course he's paid to say those things, but this time he's on target. Earlier the Nugget was as tawdry as its neighbors. Gobs of neon. Low rollers crawling over each other. Bums at the door.

But the big gun at the Nugget, Steve Wynn, is a classy dude and he hires classy people like Barry Shier, formerly of New York's Waldorf-Astoria and together they envision the Nugget as a five-star hotel. Not yet perhaps, but soon. When Wynn took over the Nugget in 1973 there was only a casino, no hotel. So he built one. He started with 579 rooms; today there are only 527.

This is because of his penchant for upgrading the Nugget by knocking down walls to expand the accommodations. Last spring he added a $55 million tower that contains a cabaret, a gourmet restaurant, a theater-ballroom, a health spa and 27 luxury suites. At the same time he got rid of satellite TV and vanities like those tucked away in a film star's dressing room. Some feature lofts with pedestals for the Jacuzzis. Dazzling? I can tell you this: It's the first time I've visited Las Vegas that I'm not anxious to leave.

Before, I've always parked the frame in one of those Strip hotels where I find it frightfully depressing, elbowing one's way across an immense casino to get to the restaurant or else back to one's room. The scene never changes. It could be the evening before. Or midnight. Or 4 o'clock in the morning.

And that's exactly why Bob Schulman decided to gamble on a hotel in Las Vegas without a casino. He figured there are legions of vacationers like himself who are looking for a place to relax after rolling the dice. Schulman was tired of the glitter, the noise, hotel employees hustling a buck. "Even gamblers get sick of the old atmosphere," Schulman insists. So far, it appears to make sense.

The Alexis Park is 100 percent full most weekends. Schulman says his guests tell him they feel like they're in Palm Springs or Hawaii. "I have absolutely no competition," he declares. This isn't to say, of course, that Schulman won't buckle under one day and surrender to the temptation of establishing a casino. But right now it appears improbable.

Vacationers who love Las Vegas but hate casinos are filling his suites. Moreover, The Strip hotels send their overflow business to the Alexis Park because they know the Alexis isn't competing for the gambling buck. The Alexis Park employs a mostly young crowd. Nearly everyone from the bellman to the cashiers, and they are eager to please. It's a far cry from the impersonal approach one encounters at other Las Vegas hotels.

From 5,000 applicants, the Alexis people chose 400 employees. The coffee shop is about as garish as the hotel gets. And even it is subdued by Las Vegas standards. Green, white and rose awnings. A brass fan spinning in the ceiling.

A scattering of planters. For active types, the Alexis provides lighted tennis courts, an aerobics fitness center, spas, a jogging track and a nine-hole putting green. The Alexis is particularly busy on weekends. The switchboard lights up like Fremont Street on Saturday night. A recorded voice with a pleasant British accent begs the caller to be patient.

"All our lines are busy; please hold." The cheapest suite goes for $70 a day, the highest costs $275. Or there's a "suite dreams" package that figures out to $84.50 per guest double occupancy) and features free cocktails, in-room flicks and the choice of a rental car or a complimentary show at a Strip hotel. For those who come to Las Vegas with stars in their eyes, a gazebo awaits in the garden for wedding ceremonies. All this and not a single slot machine on the entire 19 acres. If the Alexis is sold out and you're turned off by lobbies with casinos, tell I CUT CHRISTMAS TREES A 1 1 i A 7-8ft.

25.98 1 2 1 8-up 29.98 "SET fl 1984, Los Angeles Times LAS VEGAS What is Las Vegas without slot machines, blackjack, bingo, beautiful show girls and high rollers? It's the Alexis Park, a splendid new hotel resort that's off, The Strip, doesn't put on the dog with splashy dinner shows and is making out like Caesars only without the glitz. Without argument, the Alexis Park is the peachiest resort hotel to appear in Las Vegas since the first high roller stumbled into town. Low-rise and low-key, it comes off like a stunning oasis smack in the center of jack rabbit land. Before developer Robert H. Schulman of Agoura, Calif made his entrance the site was a dust bowl, drier than Salt Lake City on a Sunday, the habitat of lizards as well as jck rabbits.

Never mind that it is less than five minutes by car from "he Strip and only a few minutes off Paradise Avenue. All it took to transform it into a shimmering oasis was 40 million bucks. Schulman had workers cut channels for a series of streams that flow across all 19 acres. Then they fashioned waterfalls and trucked in a couple of hundred palm trees. To give it a sense of desolation, workers scattered boulders" helter-skelter.

The fact that they're plastic boulders makes no difference. Without a sledgehammer, who can tell? Schulman describes his resort as a "Mediterranean oasis in a neon desert." No flashing lights here, no electric polish. Just green grass and the relaxing murmur of waterfalls. What with low-rise, whitewashed buildings, it comes off like a slice of the Costa del Sol. The tallest unit stands two stories high and it is strictly the suite life.

That is to say, there are no rooms at the Alexis. Only suites. Suites with Jacuzzi baths, mini-bars, fireplaces, the neon blazing outside, replaced the tacky porte-cochere with one of those 33 628 Turtle Creek Manhattan, Kansas Open Weekdays 9 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun 11 a.m. -6 p.m. Prices Effective Sun.

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