Bellagio Casino

Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian already owns a controlling 56% stake of MGM Mirage, one of the world's largest hotel and gaming companies. Which is why investors found the enigmatic Los Angeles investor's latest move all the more puzzling: He wants to carve out for himself two of the company's prized landmarks on the Las Vegas Strip. Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp.

The bloom is long off the rose in most parts of the country, but the impending breath of winter is but a poetic possibility in Las Vegas, where anything that can be conceived can happen. Lilacs in February? No problem. Crocuses in July? Done. If it can grow in a pot and hold a brilliance of color in its petals and shoots, it will find its way to the Bellagio's botanical conservatory. When Steve Wynn opened the multibillion-dollar resort in October 1998, the sky was the limit.

Nevada's foreclosure crisis claimed a high-profile victim as investment bank Deutsche Bank took the first step toward foreclosing on the $3-billion Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino project. Developer and owner Ian Bruce Eichner said his company, 3700 Associates, was working with Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch & Co. to find new investors. The $760-million construction loan from Deutsche Bank went into default Wednesday, the company said. A Deutsche Bank spokesman did not return a call seeking comment.

The chronic financial plight of many of America's art museums is not news. But the loopy ways in which some museums try to bolster revenue certainly is. The latest example of creative financing is beyond loopy. Way beyond. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has rented out 21 Impressionist paintings from its incomparable collection of 36 by Claude Monet to PaperBall, proprietor of a store at the upscale Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas. Not loaned, mind you, but rented.

One of the biggest and priciest hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas Strip closed after a main power line failed, forcing thousands of guests to be relocated. The Bellagio lost partial power about 2 a.m. Sunday, said Alan Feldman, a spokesman for MGM Mirage, which owns the hotel. "We don't know what happened and probably won't for some time," he said. The hotel would not reopen until this morning at the earliest, Feldman said.

The power failure that turned out the lights Sunday night at the Bellagio hotel-casino in Las Vegas and forced its closure Monday and Tuesday also shuttered "Claude Monet: Masterworks From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston," an exhibition of 21 Impressionist paintings at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art. The primary concern was a change in climate that would endanger the paintings, normally maintained at 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 50% humidity.

Bellagio, Steve Wynn's newest hotel and casino on Sin City's crowded Strip, is an over-the-top orgy of luxurious excess. And that means the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art, with its almost uniformly first-rate paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Van Gogh, Degas, Brancusi, Giacometti, Pollock, De Kooning, Johns and 15 other celebrated Modern and contemporary artists, fits right in.

The soundtrack of a commercial for a soon-to-open Las Vegas casino has struck a chord with viewers. Sales of "Romanza," a 1997 album by Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, have soared in the three weeks since the commercial for the Bellagio hotel-casino first aired. The ad, which shows a couple swooning outside the Italian Renaissance-style casino, uses "Con Te Patiro" from the album. Since the commercial first ran during the Emmy Awards telecast, "Romanza" has moved to No.

Poker player Don Colannino hatched his plan to join the lucky ones seeking the first inside look Thursday at the new Bellagio hotel and casino--the latest imposing edifice of conspicuous consumption, Las Vegas-style. Standing outside the mammoth resort at 4 p.m., seven hours before its announced opening, Colannino leaned over a barricade and whispered to one of the red-jacketed security guards.