A newer, darker image for Wynn Commons

Wynn Commons, the open-air stone plaza north of Houston Hall, came to life this summer via the generous gift of 1963 College alumnus Steven Wynn. Wynn, who made his fortune from humble beginnings as a bingo parlor manager in Anne Arundel County, Md., became the new face of casino construction in Las Vegas and Atlantic City during the 1980s by building or revamping such resorts as the Golden Nugget and Bellagio. Wynn Commons, however, drew criticism from the first unveiling. Alice van Buren Kelley, an assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, wrote that its design and layout created an ambiance reminiscent of "stormy days of dictators," where "symbols of repression served as a backdrop for bawling voices." And at the east end, the abstract rendering of the Penn shield created a "totalitarian-state effect," according to one graduate student. After a career of redesigning skylines with casinos, Wynn is no stranger to rethinking a space, and knows controversy well. His name has bobbed up along side some of law enforcement's most salacious inquiries of the last 20 years, according to John L. Smith, an author and columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, who recently wrote Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn. According to Smith's accounts, Wynn has had a life worthy of Dostoevsky. During the mid-1980s, the author writes, he purchased mafia-stained promissory notes valued at $73.9 million for three separate $20 million loans. The promissory notes were the result of mortgages held by the Teamsters' Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund on the Las Vegas Stardust and Fremont hotels. After the Pension Fund had to divest the notes due to mafia activity and subsequent federal sanction, the notes needed a new owner. Enter Steve Wynn, who purchased the notes, Smith says, from the Pension Fund. But when the notes were prepaid at the full $73.9 million value only four months later -- an action that forfeited the Teamsters' savings from early payment -- the Pension Fund sued Wynn's Golden Nugget for racketeering, fraud, breach of contract and breach of good faith. Although the racketeering charges were dismissed, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that Wynn's Golden Nugget must divide the $14.4 million profit on the noteswith the Pension Fund to settle the other charges. Smith further alleges another connection between Wynn and the mafia, claiming that Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, head of the Genovese crime family, was unhappy with Wynn for holding out for the full amount due on the notes. He recounts an FBI-recorded conversaton between Salerno and his deputy, John "Peanuts" Tronolone, at New York's Palma Boy Social Club. During the conversation, the two alleged gangsters discuss Wynn's interest in the promissory note. The tape -- although it never brought about a prosecution against Wynn -- helped get Fat Tony a 70-year jail sentence. The conversation about Wynn was later admitted to the evidence, according to Smith. If Smith's account is correct, Wynn brushed up against the mafia on other occasions as well. In 1982, he writes, Anthony Castelbuono -- a Harvard-educated attorney -- laundered $1.187 million along with a bodyguard in Wynn's Golden Nugget. Smith implies that the casino even had a protocol set up for certain gamblers who entered their doors with large sums in small denominations. Castelbuono once used the Golden Nuggel to launder 300 pounds in small bills from the heroin trade, he adds. Goodbye segregated money; hello first wash cycle. Castelbuono was later sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $50,000 for helping to "launder millions in illicit profits," according to Smith. Wynn denies that GNAC courted mob money launderers. But if Smith is correct, then one of Penn's newest campus meeting spots is named after a casino king with mob associations noted by law enforcement and regulatory agencies. Perhaps Wynn is using architecture as penance. His dark issues are buried under a heavy stone slab, never to be heard from again. Why recreate the campus in a newer, darker image? Does the purchase of neo-conservative public space recycle reputations? Does it matter? But for the addition of junkies rattling change cups, the Commons is complete. Penn has respectability for sale, but perhaps it has lost something in the exchange of commodities.

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