Steve Wynn’s 40-year track record of forever tweaking his hotel and casino properties is not about to change now.

He remains busy monitoring developments and possibilities from Macau to South Florida and Massachusetts, but is not ignoring Las Vegas where he says the time has come for significant adjustments aimed at benefiting his Encore and Wynn.

Adjustments will probably include a major but, as yet, unnamed entertainment attraction aimed at drawing passersby from the south side. His decision is forced by the fact that redevelopment plans elsewhere on the north end of the Strip have hit a brick wall.

Major companies south of his location have also been busy with enhancements – new restaurants, clubs, etc., the nature of competition requiring constant, careful looks down the road as operators strain to stay on the cutting edge, so to speak.

The difference in Wynn’s case is he’s reacting to things that have not happened to the west and north of his address.

There’s a lack of activity on the other side of the Strip where owners of the former Frontier and Stardust complexes have abandoned (for the time being) plans to develop major properties that would sprawl across more than 80 acres opposite the Wynn and Encore properties.

Early in the planning for his Strip projects, Wynn would occasionally lapse into happy anticipation of expected benefits from the traffic that would be generated by the Elad Group’s plans for a very upscale 5,000 room version of New York’s Plaza Hotel on the site of the Frontier.

He also expected similar big things from Boyd Gaming’s Echelon Project on the site of the former Stardust. His thinking: they would generate crowds of deep-pocketed visitors who would want to spend time in the Wynn and Encore.

The big MGM development at the north end of the Strip was also abandoned so that Wynn could be moved to say, as he did recently, "I am at the north end of the Strip."

That’s not the situation he was once expecting. The Great Recession caused banks and potential visitors alike to lose their appetites for anything having to do with Las Vegas. The signs of a general recovery are obvious, but they are not yet dramatic enough to have companies investing billions on the Strip.

Wynn and Encore were built because Wynn had his financing locked up before the bad times hit, but the Plaza, Echelon and MGM projects were put on the shelf.

Which is where they have remained. Well-connected sources tell me the Elad Group’s owners have been continuing their search for a joint venture partner to help revive plans for the Frontier property.

They made what Wynn describes as an attractive offer, telling Wynn he could build and operate whatever he might like and they (Elad) would continue to make payments on the loan that financed the $1.24 billion buyout of Ruffin in 2007.

A source familiar with those Elad plans told GamingToday: "They’re looking but they have set such a high hurdle for themselves – they want a five star kind of place – that they are not likely to be successful until business conditions show a lot more improvement than is evident at the present.

Wynn seemed to come to the same conclusion, acknowledging the appeal of the offer that he said could create as many as 40,000 direct and indirect jobs, but also emphasizing that the combination of uncertainty created by the political climate makes it impossible for him to promise the kind of return Elad probably wants.

Boyd Gaming executives have said nothing about their expectations for a possible revival of Echelon beyond the fact that they continue to monitor the myriad factors affecting the business climate.

There’s been no sign MGM expects to restart its North Strip joint venture. So Wynn is playing the hand he has been dealt, adjusting his thinking to a reality that was unexpected four or five years ago. And he has a luxury available to few others in the gaming business – a capital strong enough to keep Wynn Resorts moving forward.

Oops!

In the last issue of GT I wrote that Caesars Entertainment owns the former Mandalay Resorts, which in another incarnation was known as Circus Circus Enterprises. Wrong!

MGM Mirage Resorts acquired the former Mandalay properties in 2005, and MGM has since changed its name to MGM Resorts International. I apologize for my error.