Designer Times
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55. Las Vegas - Wild Showbiz Schemes

Las Vegas during the 1990s burst with new hotels and casinos along with wild ideas spawned by Steve Wynn's spectacular Pirate Battle Show at Treasure Island's Buccaneer Bay. Typically these proposed new entertainment projects would start with an owner who was driven by the "can you top this" dropped gauntlet. Then a show business production designer would develop the idea far enough that an actual construction project would be green lighted.

Next, teams of specialized sub-contractors would be invited in to figure out if and how this latest kooky scheme could be turned into reality. These subs all knew each other pretty well since most had worked together on prior Theme Park and special entertainment projects. There was no shortage of folks who relished getting a shot at anything new and nutty....fearless but grounded in prior successes.

Each new Las Vegas project generally required the same variety of expertise that these subs would bring to the job; art direction - themed architecture - costume - live entertainment and stunts - fire and lighting EFX - audio - show control - scripting - original music and dialogue and the like. The show stuff would be housed in the engineering side - structural - electrical - civil - HVAC - mechanical engineering and such. The GurrDesign Company represented the special show action equipment design side of the whole gang. We all knew each other and were quite comfortable taking off into an always risky new venture. In fact, most thrived on the wild stuff.

So the way we worked was like this: The owner would select a prime contractor who would then collect all the subs. A project manager would act as a referee between us all. Major subs would sometime engage yet another layer of detail sub specialists. While I would sometimes be involved in the initial concept meetings with the owner to figure out just how we would get the crazy thing to work, I did the later detail work as a sub specialist.

Everybody knew that I never had a formal engineering degree and was not authorized to autograph any construction documents for the Clark County Building and Safety Department. So I worked thru Kent Gingham's Entertainment Engineering Inc. in Burbank. Kent trusted that my stuff would work, and I trusted that his eagle eye would make sure that nothing would fall down. This relationship went on for years as we taught each other our trades. The owners came to trust the Kent and Bob Show when we made our design presentations. Kent signed the legal drawings for the government.

After all the folks had developed the concept design phase, followed by the conceptual engineering phase, bid documents would be issued. There was no shortage of eager construction bidders who wanted fame by building the latest Las Vegas Spectacular. This stuff is very scary to bid on....I marveled at their risk taking. More than one low bidder disappeared in bankruptcy right after the show opened.

One clever owner used a great technique to ensure that everything was built to specification and was going to perform as promised. The construction contractor would submit monthly invoices for ongoing progress payments. The owner would retain 10% and pay 90% of the invoice each month. This could be tough on any under-funded group. This "retention" would be paid after the show opened when everything was working properly....a bit later if there were still problems. One time, as a contractor was pleading for his life, the owners rep yelled "it's retention - I retain it". Now there's the Las Vegas kiss of death. One time I raised my rates early, then when I was stiffed at the end, I was still slightly ahead.