AND THEN THERE WAS LIGHT

Monday, August 08, 2005

Living the nightlife with Andy Masi
(Luxury Las Vegas – August 2005)
By Marsala Rypka

Luck, fate, hard work, connections, timing, and the willingness to risk… perhaps a mix of all these things have helped 34 year-old, Andy Masi, son of first-generation, middle-class, Italian parents who emigrated to Long Island, New York, carve out a successful career as a nightclub kingpin who caters to Las Vegas locals, tourists and high-wattage celebs like Sting, Leonardo DiCaprio, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, Bruce Willis, Charlie Sheen, Tobey Maguire, Paris Hilton and Nicollette Sheridan.

Some people have a knack for making sure people have a great time and Masi does just that. His foray into the nightclub scene began innocently enough when he started college and his meteoric rise since then exemplifies the American Dream. “Growing up I had no idea what I wanted to be,” says Masi. “But I knew I wanted to go to college, I’d have to work after school to pay for the tuition.”

Masi’s future was fortuitously set when he got accepted at Boston University. “My next door neighbor ran a nightclub and I asked him for a job,” Masi recalls. At 18, he was hired as a security guard/busboy at AXIS, a 1000-person capacity hot spot that had morphed from disco and punk into new wave, then grunge, on Landsdowne Street, the main artery of Boston’s music scene.

Oddly enough even though Masi wasn’t old enough to drink, by law he was old enough to tend bar. With his dazzling smile and friendly demeanor he quickly developed a loyal following and soon the manager asked if he wanted to help with the marketing. The owners of the club, Patrick and John Lyons, noticed that Masi was always willing to take on more responsibility and when the manager left a year later, they asked if he would take over the entire operation and promotion of the club.

The Lyons brothers were aggressive guys who took risks with young people like Masi, who was only 20 at the time. “They gave me the opportunity to succeed or hang myself and luckily I did well,” he says.

The whole time that Masi was managing the nightclub, he was leading a double life, going to school full-time, majoring in history and education. “I was convinced I was going to be a schoolteacher, but after four months of teaching, I realized I was better suited for the nightclub business and the money was a whole lot different.”

“The best thing about Boston during that time (1989-1995),” says Masi, “was that it had a very international flavor with kids from families all over the world, Middle Eastern, Japanese, European, or Latin American, who went to school at BU. The university cleverly marketed to foreign students because they paid more for tuition, and with Harvard and MIT drawing more international students, Boston changed overnight from this American college frat town to this sophisticated, elegant global city.”

“The crowd was all 21 or 22 year-olds and you couldn’t tell who had money. A good friend could be a prince from the Middle East, a Japanese tycoon’s son, or some rich kid from Latin America. Everyone was there to party. School was an excuse for them to go nuts for four years and then go back to their country.”

That upscale atmosphere sparked an idea that Masi had for a new nightclub that targeted a high-end clientele with table reservations and bottle service, instead of the casual, $20 cover charge places that were so common. The Lyons brothers put up the money and the real estate while Masi, the managing partner, took charge of the design, construction, hiring, operations and marketing of the new club called Karma.

In nine years, the Lyons Group expanded Landsdowne Street, building nine venues, each targeting a different audience, with total sales generating $25 million. With a successful track record to his name, Masi was designated the troubleshooter for all the Lyons’ clubs. “Whenever there was a property that wasn’t doing well, they’d say ‘Hey Andy would you mind going over there and fixing it,” So I’d change the management team, change the marketing and get it running as a profitable business. Then I’d oversee it from a distance and go on to the next club.”

The responsibility was enormous and one that would ultimately pay off, but Masi didn’t have time to ponder his future. “You’re so knee deep in the tasks at hand that you don’t think about where this is going to take me,” he says.

In 1993, Masi’s hard work and connections took him to a higher level of success when Patrick Lyons, by then known as New England’s preeminent entertainment czar, introduced Masi to the legendary Isaac Tigrett, who had co-founded the Hard Rock Café in London in 1971 when he was only 19 years old. “Isaac came to Boston to open the first House of Blues in Cambridge, and John and Patrick, who’d known him for years, asked me to help him,” Masi reminisces.

A great relationship developed between the aspiring entrepreneur and the accomplished visionary, and in 1996 when Tigrett decided to go to Atlanta during the Olympics and open a temporary, 5,000-person House of Blues in a massive, old Baptist tabernacle, Masi was the person he called. “I was there for two and a half months. It was an amazing experience to take on something of that scale.”

After setting up and running a restaurant, a nightclub and a concert venue with thousands of people coming through the doors every single day, it was a big letdown for Masi to return to Boston. “I was 26 years old by then and everyone around me was in college and it didn’t feel right. My eyes had been opened to something bigger.”

Even though Tigrett left HOB, Masi had met all the corporate executives when they came to Atlanta, and a year or two later when they opened a HOB in Las Vegas, they offered Masi a job handling the marketing.

“I’d only spent a weekend or two in Las Vegas so I didn’t know the town at all,” says Masi. “I had no idea what I was in for.” At HOB, Masi and his team were innovative in starting the Service Industry Night that targeted bartenders, cocktail waitresses, valets, and front desk people who worked on Friday and Saturday nights. “No one viewed this local market as a group of sophisticated young people who wanted to go out and be entertained and we turned Sunday night into a happening that brought them together,” says Masi.

Again great connections came into play when Masi’s old college roommate introduced him to Elizabeth Blau, a young woman in charge of restaurant development for Steve Wynn. “She was the first person I met in Las Vegas. We became friends and she graciously introduced me to the people she knew,” says Masi.

One day Blau told Masi that the Bellagio was interested in opening a nightclub and she asked if he knew anyone who could give her some direction. Coincidently Masi had an old friend, 34-year-old Andrew Sasson, who owned nightclubs in New York and Miami, who had just called Masi the month before saying he wanted to open a nightclub in Vegas. “I had Andrew’s sales packet which I gave to Elizabeth and before you knew it we’re all talking about doing a nightclub called Light at Bellagio,” says Masi.

With Wynn and the MGM Mirage in negotiations, approval for Light was bounced back and forth until the merger was complete and the green light was given by Bobby Baldwin, president and CEO of Mirage Resorts, Inc. “There was no sophisticated nightclub in Las Vegas where people would dress up, reserve a table, buy a bottle and enjoy excellent service. Light used the same philosophy Andrew had learned living in Europe and I had learned in Boston. We treated the nightclub the same as a five-star restaurant, which fit Bellagio’s image,” says Masi.

After the success of Light they started looking at other opportunities. “There was nothing that really appealed to our demographic,” Masi explains. “The casino caters to the baby boomers but there’s this group of people who want to have fun, who don’t mind paying a premium as long as there’s a great product, great energy, great service and they’re taken care of. It’s more about a lifestyle than an age. We appeal to everyone from 21 to 70. So we came up with Caramel at Bellagio and Mist at Treasure Island, two very cool lounges. Then we had customers and friends asking us where to go for dinner before coming to Caramel or Light. Bellagio has phenomenal restaurants like Le Cirque and Jasmine, but they didn’t cater to our market, so we pitched Bobby Baldwin about FIX and as always he gave us his full support.

“We found some great German designers called Graft Berlin, who’d never designed a restaurant before, but we knew they’d make a bold statement. They designed Brad Pitt’s house, museums and art pieces. Very funky, modern things you haven’t seen in Las Vegas. The restaurant is open with no walls separating the restaurant from the casino and the space is constructed of almost entirely Costa Rican Padouk wood. From décor to food, it appeals to 90 percent of the market, 30 percent of which are locals, which is great,” Masi says proudly.

The Light Group’s proven formula for creating a package of products where people can dine, have a drink and then dance the night away will be recreated at the Mirage in December when Masi opens up Stack, and American bistro-type restaurant, Jet, a high-end nightclub, and at the moment an unnamed lounge. “Scott Sibella, president of the Mirage, is injecting so much new energy into the hotel,” says Masi.

While Masi describes himself as energetic, passionate and driven, the best thing about him is how very real and down to earth he is. “This is a tough business to maintain,” he says. “People’s egos get the best of them and they are either completely full of themselves or they burn themselves out.”

I doubt that will happen to Masi. He recently married a great girl from back home in Boston and although he personally shuns the spotlight, he invites everyone to Shine, Radiate and Glow… Walk into the Light.