Wishna, who travels between offices in New York, Boca Raton, Fla., and Las Vegas, advocates entrepreneurialism and risk-taking, but he is critical of some of the city's excesses. The New Yorker formed his company in 1998 and opened the Las Vegas office in 1999 after working on Newton's contract.

Wishna recently spoke with In Business Las Vegas about the future of entertainment and gaming in Las Vegas.

Question: Newspapers in Britain and Ireland have interviewed Michael Flatley about his plans to build a Las Vegas resort, yet he hasn't disclosed his plans here and doesn't yet control any land. What happened to his plans, and how serious is he about Las Vegas?

Answer: He's very serious about Las Vegas. I've been working with Michael for about three to four years now. He's serious about Las Vegas as others have been serious about Las Vegas. What it comes down to is financing. It's putting together the right financial package. It's having the banks lined up and the equity necessary to do a deal. He's got an excellent brand and excellent reputation and a great (concept) in terms of building a Golden Shamrock hotel and casino. He has investors and banks lined up, but he's still missing a part of the equity that he would need to take that and make it a reality. There's no announcement coming soon.

The Strip seems to be going Broadway lately, with Steve Wynn bringing "Avenue Q" to Wynn Las Vegas, The Venetian's upcoming "Phantom of the Opera" and "Mamma Mia!" at Mandalay Bay.

There's a follow-the-leader mentality here. If a Cirque du Soleil show comes in and does well, most properties would love to have a Cirque du Soleil show join their property. We're at a point where we're almost saturated with Cirque du Soleil shows. Broadway historically never worked in Las Vegas. "Mamma Mia!" proved that it can work at a gaming property. Other companies are now coming in with their shows. You're probably going to have two or three more of these types of shows coming into town, and at some point it's going to become saturated and then it's going to go in a different direction.

The Celine Dion show has given Caesars Palace a needed shot in the arm and its success even prompted Caesars to run a second show, Elton John's "The Red Piano," this time with ownership rights. Will this lead to the introduction of more famous headliners in Vegas? Or is this a unique situation?

I think it's kind of unique for Caesars Entertainment because there's not that many international headliners that they could bring here. Discussions in the past, and I was involved in some of them, were with Phil Collins to do a show here with the Walt Disney Company. They've approached Rod Stewart, they've approached Madonna. There's not that many international headliners that would even desire that regimen or that the property would want for its brand.

Wayne Newton still sells out his shows in spite of a new generation of titillating entertainment on the Strip. How do you explain his success?

He's probably the last of the legends that built this town in terms of entertainment. I'm talking about the era of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Siegfried and Roy. Wayne kind of grew up in that environment. He came to this town in 1959. Historically he's been a top earner for properties over the past several decades. What's unique now is in the last 10 to 15 years a lot of the properties in Las Vegas have gone away from the headliner-type venue for a production show. Now when tourists come to Las Vegas, their options are three to five Cirque du Soleil-type shows, other production shows or seeing what I consider classic Las Vegas -- a headliner who is going to be intimate with the audience, who is going to give them their money's worth and put on a hell of a show. Wayne historically has done that.

There's talk that Newton will be performing many fewer shows than previously. What's going on?

They are negotiating dates for 2005 and beyond. Wayne is very committed to the USO celebrity circle and the efforts that he puts forth to entertain the troops during wartime. He is going out again in October for another USO tour. Wayne has been doing this since the Vietnam War. He's probably done five or seven tours through various campaigns and wars we've had. He still will be at the Stardust next year and they just haven't decided yet on how many weeks.

Phil Ruffin has quietly accumulated a fortune and avoids the media spotlight. Donald Trump's strapped company just declared bankruptcy, but he's a popular corporate brand. How did these polar opposites get together and agree on a business deal?

I'm good friends with both of them. About five years ago I looked at Phil's parcel of land at the Frontier, about 41 acres of land, and I said, you have a great piece of steak here, let's see if we can put some sizzle on it and do something that's never been done -- a multi-use complex on that site which would encompass high-end residential, retail, spa, five-star resort, and bring in brands that have not flown their flag in Las Vegas and would love to be here. One of the first thoughts I had was to bring in Harrods department store. We flew out to London, met with (Harrods Chairman) Mohamed Al Fayed, and talked about bringing Harrods to part of Phil Ruffin's site and connecting it to the Fashion Show. That went pretty well in terms of the negotiations, and then we had Sept. 11 and that pretty much killed that deal. Then my concept was, let's focus on the high end of vertical residential, because that's where Vegas is going to be in the future in terms of residential developme! nt. In my opinion there's no one better in high-end residential development than Donald Trump. I introduced Donald Trump to Phil Ruffin and we started talking in May 2001 to the point where it is now where we're in partnership to build Trump International Hotel and Tower.

The trend in offering sexy entertainment and risque advertising continues to push forward. Do you see any of this fading away?

First off I think it's unnecessary to attract people to our town (this way). I think it's a fad. We want to move so much away from the family-type environment. With the "What happens here stays here" and the Hard Rock Hotel crossing the line in terms of some of its billboards, the company wants to emphasize that it's back to adult entertainment. Once I think we get through this process, it's unnecessary to keep that type of advertising and promotion going. I don't see long term that historically we're always going to cross the line in terms of risque type advertising and entertainment.

Is there any downside to pushing sexy entertainment?

As we're growing as a community -- we're getting up to 2 million people -- it's not the type of image that will attract families to come here. At some point it may get difficult to attract employees to come here with wives or husbands and children and that could be detrimental to the growth that's going on in the gaming industry. I think the way things are going at some point it's going to trail off. It's not going to continue to be as risque as it is now.

What do you think about the new reality shows set in Las Vegas? "American Casino" has shown employees arguing and getting drunk and "The Casino" has shown disgruntled gamblers after a losing streak. Do you think these shows depict casinos or Vegas in a bad light or is there some allure to it all?

Of the two, the one that is OK in my book is "American Casino" at Green Valley Ranch. The partying aspect doesn't affect me because it's all in good fun and there's nothing really negative that would reflect on the (owners) which obviously you'd want to care about because of your gaming license. What it's done is open up a new world to Green Valley Ranch (for people) that never knew it existed or what it looked like. And it's been portrayed as a triple-A property. The other side of the coin is "The Casino." If I were one of the two new owners on a conditional license with the Gaming Commission I never would have agreed to put that show on the air or at least I would have had veto power. It shows them in a terrible light as owner-managers of a property. It shows them looking like they don't know what they're doing. They're bringing in traffic that's contrary to what they say they want to do, which is to bring back the Old Vegas (environment). They've done nothing but bring in strippers and the type of patron and entertainment that really goes against what they're trying to promote. I don't think (the publicity) is going to hurt anyone (else) in the long run.

The latest brands slated for Strip casinos are Hooters and Planet Hollywood. Do you think we'll see more entertainment brands taking over casinos and are you representing any of these companies?

We come up with ideas and concepts and then we identify the players to make it happen. Then there are a lot of companies that approach us in terms of coming up with ideas and having us explore the marketplace. There are various hotel companies that have not flown their flag here in Las Vegas that want in here. There are entertainment companies that are looking for stand-alone entertainment (businesses) or to be part of a hotel-casino. There are retail companies looking to promote their goods within Las Vegas and there are individuals who historically were never attracted to Las Vegas -- money fund managers and high net worth individuals -- who look at Las Vegas as a great investment vehicle.

As someone who's worked with older Las Vegas properties, do you think the MGM MIRAGE and Harrah's mergers will help or hurt competition in Las Vegas in the long run?

Prior to Steve Wynn's building the Mirage, you had maybe 15 key properties on the Strip and they were all the same. They were all doing the same thing. They were hurting. I think six hotels were in bankruptcy, others were going into bankruptcy. It wasn't a good time for our economy here. If you look at the way the gaming industry has evolved, you have small-cap firms, mid-cap firms and large-cap firms. Any time there is consolidation within an industry it opens up tremendous opportunity. There will be a lot of properties that will be duplication of effort and those properties will come on the market. Small-cap companies will be able to step up to a name property and acquire that property. Mid-cap companies do their own consolidation at a smaller level and continue to grow their companies. We have a client in northern Nevada that was able to identify a niche market and take very small hotel-casinos that independently aren't a blip on MGM's radar but have so far acquired 14 casinos in northern Nevada and central Nevada and are primed to go public at the end of this year. One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

Is there any concern by Phil Ruffin that potential business partners, instead of jumping into new opportunities, are waiting it out for potential asset sales to arise from the latest mergers?

Originally we had that concern when the megamerger frenzy hit a few months ago. The fact is that Phil Ruffin has the hottest piece of real estate in Las Vegas right now. You have 2 million square feet of superluxury retail space right next door with the ability to put a moving walkway right into the Fashion Show mall. You're directly across from Wynn Las Vegas and that project. And if you look at the Four Corners, so to speak, in terms of Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn, Donald Trump and Phil Ruffin, that's really the new growth that is happening in Las Vegas. Even if an Excalibur or a Monte Carlo or another property went on the market, it's a different situation from developing your own identity from the ground up in the hottest location in Las Vegas. It really has not impacted us. In fact what (the megamergers have) done over the last month and a half is brought more (potential deals) to the table than we've ever seen before.

Liz Benston covers gaming and tourism for In Business Las Vegas and its sister publication, the Las Vegas Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4077 or by e-mail at benston@lasvegassun.com.