William G. Bennett

William G. Bennett William G. Bennett, a furniture store chain owner and failed investor who found new ways to market the glittery glamour of Las Vegas to the Middle American masses, has died. He was 78. Grandson of Archie Bennett, Glendale's first mayor, son of a Glendale rancher, Bill was born in Glendale, graduated from Glendale High School and attended Phoenix Junior College. Bennett served as a Navy dive-bomber pilot during World War II. Bennett, a multimillionaire philanthropist who refashioned the Las Vegas Strip for the non-wealthy and their families, died Dec. 22, 2002 following a lengthy illness. As chairman of Circus Circus Enterprises from 1974 to 1994, Bennett turned around the failing flagship Circus Circus resort, and extended the Strip southward by building the themed mega-resorts Excalibur in 1990 and Luxor in 1993. In 1995, he worked to strengthen the northern end of the strip by buying and renovating the 50-year-old Sahara. Over several decades, Bennett pioneered trends to lure quantity over quality spenders, concentrating on drawing millions of the slot-machine crowd from the heartland, rather that the thousands of high-rollers already flying in the pricey resorts. He began his career after the war, when he built a Phoenix-based furniture store chain, which he sold in 1962. By 1965, he was working as an employee of Del Webb Corp. developers, which hoped to bring businessmen into its casino operation. Bennett began at the company's Sahara Tahoe, learning the resort business as casino host at night and in various hotel departments by day. Within a year, he was transferred to downtown Las Vegas to manage the company's Mint resort. Bennett left Del Webb in 1971, with $5 million in stock options, and teamed up with Reno's Bill Pennington to lease novelty electronic gambling machines to casinos. In 1974, the two men leased the failing Circus Circus with an option to buy, which they exercised shortly before taking the company public in 1983. The businesslike Bennett focused on providing value at low prices at the circus-themed hotel and casino, knowing that masses of people spending even a few dollars each would translate into profits. He increased the number of slot machines and stream-lined their management and kicked out those unscrupulous midway vendors who angered customers by fleecing them. Most important, he sought out the Las Vegas-bound drivers without hotel reservations by advertising widely and boldly on radio: "Rooms available: if not, we'll place you." The partners added resorts in Reno and newly emerging Laughlin, Nev., then built the $300 million Excalibur, with its King Arthur theme, and the $375-million Luxor, replicating ancient Egyptian temples, hieroglyphic inscriptions and even King Tutankhamen's tomb. In 1995, Bennett sold his stock in Circus Circus and bought the Moroccan-themed Sahara and renovated it. With Ralph Engelstad, he also developed the $200-million Las Vegas Motor Speedway. They sold the complex in 1998. In September, Forbes magazine listed Bennett as 368th on its list of the 400 richest people in America, with a worth of $600 million. His Bennett Foundation has given more than $10 million to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "Bill Bennett was one of the Strip's top profit-producers for almost a 20-year stretch," Bill Thompson, casino industry expert and UNLV professor, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal after Bennett's death. "He cut costs everywhere, but he understood his market: Middle-class Americans. The regular guy can afford Las Vegas because of guys like Bill Bennett." Bennett was remembered during a memorial service as a generous philanthropist whose business successes helped shaped modern Las Vegas. Several hundred mourners, including many of his longtime employees, came to Artemus Ham Hall on the campus of U.N.L.V. to say goodbye and honor him. "In so many ways, he fathered modern Las Vegas," said John Wilhelm, president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, parent of the culinary Workers Union Local 226. "(Bennett) succeeded because he valued the role of employees, especially frontline employees." Following a 1984 labor dispute that resulted in work stoppages, at several Strip properties, Wilhelm said Bennett continued to pay Circus Circus employees a higher wage than was offered at many competing hotel-casinos because Bennett did not want to back out of a previously agreed upon contract with his workers. Later, Wilhelm said Bennett's compassion led him to supply a catering truck that provided free meals to union workers as they picketed outside the Frontier in the mid-1990's. "He gave those people three hot meals a day for five years," Wilhelm said. "Mr. Bennett provided more than food; he provided faith in humankind." Widowed and remarried, Bennett is survived by his wife, Lynn; two children, Diana and William A; a step-daughter, Laura Lynn; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Locally he is survived by his sister, Betty Spitler.