From our Fall 2010 Issue
Photographed by Michel Arnaud and Rebecca Devono
A Monte Carlo-style casino brings new energy and glamour to the historic elegance of The Greenbrier, and A-list celebrities, politicians, and sports personalities flock to its history-making red carpet event.
It is hard to believe that just over a year ago, local businessman Jim Justice bought The Greenbrier out of bankruptcy for a song—a mere $20.1million. He promised to restore its five-star rating, to reinvigorate America’s Resort, and to build a world-class casino. On July 2, 2010, he made good on his promise by unveiling the Casino Club, a 102,000-square-foot entertainment complex underneath the The Greenbrier’s front lawn—something he describes as Monte Carlo meets “Gone with the Wind” with a little James Bond thrown in.
“The Greenbrier has its history, its great tradition—all that’s wonderful, there’s no question, and we don’t want to change anything about its elegance at all,” Justice says. “But it had to have energy.”
The Gambler
Since taking over the helm of West Virginia’s crown jewel, there’s no denying that Justice has infused the resort with energy. Electrified and ignited is more like it—bookings and reservations have more than doubled. He convinced Jerry West to open a signature steakhouse, Prime 44; he secured a six-year deal that brings the PGA Tour’s FedExCup Series to the legendary golf destination with The Greenbrier Classic; and he signed a marketing agreement with Keeneland Race Track in Lexington, Kentucky, that will cross-promote both destinations and provide quick and convenient air and train transportation between the two attractions. Justice also orchestrated daily direct flights with Delta Air Lines from New York-LaGuardia and Atlanta-Hartfield to nearby Greenbrier Valley Airport.
And he isn’t finished. In addition to the casino, a world-class performing arts center is in the works. He is outfitting a train—The Greenbrier Express—in full Greenbrier glamour. According to The Greenbrier’s interior designer Carleton Varney, each car will represent a U.S. president who has visited the resort, and the train will bring guests from Washington, D.C. to the resort’s train station, where they will be chauffeured to the hotel in a horse-drawn carriage. Yet, another attraction that will draw legions of fans is an upcoming museum that will honor and house the archives of Dorothy Draper—the legendary designer who gave The Greenbrier its trademark American Regency Baroque-style in 1946.
Double Down
Gambling is big business. According to the Washington, D.C.-based American Gaming Association, more than one quarter of Americans (28 percent) visited a casino in 2009 and contributed to gross gaming revenues of $30.74 billion nationwide.
West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin believes this is good news for the state’s economy. “The Greenbrier has always been our marquee resort,” says Manchin. “It’s a destination. [The casino] is not for the gaming of convenience, where you can just walk off the street. It’s a tourism destination and its tourism dollars will stay in West Virginia.”
Unlike other gaming institutions, the Casino Club, which cost $80 million to build, is only open to overnight resort guests, members of The Greenbrier Sporting Club, and The Greenbrier Golf and Tennis Club. Men must wear jackets and women may wear anything from cocktail dresses to Sunday’s best, and smoking is prohibited.
When guests step into the casino and descend the elegant staircase, they enter a glamorous and sophisticated—and yes, over-the-top—rendition of a Hollywood movie set. James Bond would be at home here. It isn’t Vegas. It isn’t Atlantic City. It’s purely The Greenbrier—a look of its own and a feast for the senses. Soft jazz plays in the background. The Greenbrier’s trademark vibrant and oversized patterns envelope the room, and posh lounge areas invite conversation. New restaurants—In-Fusion, an Asian-fusion and sushi bar, and Twelve Oaks, an equestrian-themed lounge—add culinary variety. It’s an intimate space where guests can play Blackjack, roulette, baccarat, craps, three-card poker and Texas Hold ‘Em, or one of the 325 slot machines. There’s even a private room—The Greenbrier Royale—reserved for high rollers. The entire complex feels as if it has always been apart of The Greenbrier.
In dramatic fashion, Justice has introduced a new tradition to The Greenbrier. At 10 p.m. each night, the lights flicker, drawing attention to the marble staircase and the oversized conch shell fountain as performers, trained by two New York-based choreographers, dance to “The Greenbrier Waltz,” a specially commissioned composition by Greenbrier County native Tony Nalker. Costumed cocktail waitresses promenade down the staircase and provide flutes of champagne to guests. The toast is the same every night: “To good health, good friends, and good fortune.”
“The Greenbrier is all about traditions,” Justice says. “We haven’t taken that away. What we’ve done is add some new traditions.”
A Full House
Building an addition onto a historic landmark can be tricky, but adding on an underground wing without disturbing the site’s character and infrastructure is downright risky. Not one to shy away from risk—he did, after all, buy The Greenbrier—that’s just what Justice decided to do. And why not? Underground build-outs are not foreign to the resort. In fact, in the 1950s, President Eisenhower built a sophisticated network of secret bunkers beneath The Greenbrier for the nation’s government to relocate in the event of a nuclear attack. Today, guests can tour those bunkers.
“Going underground made perfect sense,” says architect Michael Oliver McClung, a Greenbrier County native and partner at the prestigious architectural firm Shope Reno Wharton in Norwalk, Connecticut, who was hired to bring Justice’s vision to life. “There wasn’t a good way to take something as big as a casino and tack it on to the Greenbrier and keep its historical integrity intact. We really felt that building it under the front lawn would give us the ability to create a very direct connection to the hotel’s lower lobby.”
When it was announced that Justice had purchased The Greenbrier, McClung’s mother, Karen Lee McClung, a neighbor of the Justice family, immediately called her son. “My mother said, ‘You need to pay attention to this,’” McClung says. “I grew up visiting the hotel and I was so excited to hear that Jim had purchased it. My feelings about the resort are similar to his. I also didn’t want to see the resort become a chain hotel and risk losing its heritage.”
McClung, whose architectural firm is known for designing high-end luxury homes and commercial spaces that feel residential, contacted Justice. “I didn’t know exactly what Jim wanted to do, but I wanted him to know who we were and that I cared,” he says. “I wanted to be involved, to have my hands in it so that I knew it was done correctly. I couldn’t bear the thought of something done poorly there. The Greenbrier is our heritage. It is one of the things that make us special. My priority was to protect and maintain history.”
But it wasn’t without challenges. Once the location was decided, Justice dropped a bombshell—he wanted it up and running in only nine months. “That definitely added a whole new level of excitement,” laughs McClung. “But Jim is an incredible motivator, and we had a fantastic team of engineers, contractors, and designers who worked lock-step together. And we got it done.”
The 35-foot-deep hole in the front lawn became the 102,000 square-foot underground entertainment complex. “The biggest challenges were structural. We knew that buses and fire trucks would be driving on top of the roof—but that was solved through good engineering,” he says. Another challenge was getting people from the lobby to the casino. “We needed a middle level and Jim wanted to create more shops and restaurants, so we created the mezzanine that ties the hotel with the casino.”
On the mezzanine level—known as Greenbrier Avenue—Café Carleton, an upscale coffeehouse, and Draper’s, which has relocated and is now open 24 hours a day, join trendy boutiques offering jewelry and women’s and men’s collections. A grand staircase leads guests from the mezzanine level to the casino.
Through the entire process, Justice made his mandate clear—he didn’t want the casino to resemble anything from Vegas or Atlantic City. “During the planning phase, Jim was in Las Vegas for a tournament with the girls’ basketball team he coaches, and he flew out a group of us to tour different casinos,” McClung recalls. “During our first meeting, he said, ‘Oliver, what do you need from me?’ I replied, ‘Well, we want to walk through some of the best casinos here and get an idea of what you like.’ Jim looked at me and said, ‘Oliver, there’s nothing in this town that’s right for us. You guys go walk around Vegas and look at everything, and then you go back home and don’t do anything like it.’”
Interior designer Carleton Varney, Dorothy Draper’s protégé who took over as president of Dorothy Draper & Company, Inc., got the same marching orders. “The Greenbrier represents something that Jim Justice understood from the beginning—glamour and history. That’s its main selling point,” he says.
When Varney and Brinsley Matthews joined the design discussions for the new casino, they knew that their goal was to make the transition from the hotel to the casino seamless. “My goal was to put as much Dorothy Draper in the casino as we could,” says Varney. He placed an oversized conch shell-shaped fountain in between the curving double staircases. “The shell is an iconic homage to Draper, who used oversized plaster conch shells in accessories, statement pieces and plasterwork details above doors in several of her interiors, including The Greenbrier. It was one of her favorite motifs,” he explains.
When Dorothy Draper was hired in 1946 to restore The Greenbrier after it had been used as a military hospital during World War II, she created a masterpiece. “Dorothy did something beyond being a decorator. She created a look. You always knew when you were in a Draper interior,” says Varney. “The Greenbrier’s interior is a statement of a period of American life. It embodies high glamour.”
As passionate as Varney is in championing his mentor, he’s even more passionate when it comes to the direction The Greenbrier was going under the previous ownership, when parts of the hotel were “un-Draperized.” “People have always come to me wanting their hotels to look like The Greenbrier, but the owners before Jim were trying to make The Greenbrier look like a new hotel. Why? Why do that when you have what all others aspire to be?” he says. “Newer hotels have a uniform look about them. I call it ‘Commercial Elegance.’ They buy reproduction antiques for the lobby and throw down a Persian rug. But The Greenbrier stands apart. I’m just thrilled that I could restore some of the parts of the hotel that had been demolished by the previous owners.”
Varney effortlessly channels Draper, as if she is sitting on his shoulder. “Dorothy would walk around the office and ask what people were working on and say, ‘Show me nothing that looks like gravy!’” Varney shares. “Well, there’s nothing about The Greenbrier that looks like gravy!”
He strategically carried the trademark oversized floral and tassel patterns, black and white checkerboard floors, large blue and white oriental porcelain palace jars, and richly upholstered furnishings throughout the new casino addition. Surrounded by gaming tables and slot machines, a replica of the resort’s famous Springhouse stands in the center of the room, and the sweeping double staircase is worthy of Scarlet O’Hara.
Varney, whose role is much like a curator, feels that the glittery grand opening was flawless. “This event was more important than 1946,” Carleton claims, alluding to the time period when The Greenbrier underwent a drastic facelift. “This was the rebirth of the hotel.”
A Royal Flush
The Greenbrier has been a vacation destination for celebrities, royalty, and politicians for 232 years. In the 19th century, the likes of Martin Van Buren, Dolly Madison, and Henry Clay sought the restorative powers of the area’s sulphur springs. In the 20th century, 12 U.S. presidents, royalty such as Charles, the Prince of Wales and Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, singers Bing Crosby and U2’s Bono, culinary queen Julia Child, and the Kennedy and Vanderbilt families took refuge in the resort’s 6,500-acres of rolling hills.
And this past summer, without doubt, a new era began. The Greenbrier unrolled the red carpet for a star-studded event that brought 21st century celebrities, politicians, and sports icons—Jennifer Garner, Ben Affleck, Jessica Simpson, Brooke Shields, Lionel Richie, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, Jane Seymour, Debbie Reynolds, Raquel Welch, Barbara Eden, Tom Watson, and Jack Nicklaus, to name a few—to celebrate the Casino Club’s grand opening. The television show Extra covered the event with Beth Ostrosky, Howard Stern’s wife, interviewing the celebrities as they walked the red carpet.
Actress Jennifer Garner, one of the state’s most vocal ambassadors, was overcome with excitement. “I feel that I’m just going to bust with pride that my home state has something this beautiful to offer—this elegant, classy, and glamorous,” said Garner. “It’s just a reminder that we are one of the top tourist destinations in the country. So many people just don’t know. I mean, have you ever been to any place more beautiful in your whole life?”
Another native West Virginian, actress and singer Ann Magnuson, was equally excited. “For me West Virginia is the greatest place in America,” she said. “In a way I don’t want too many folks to know about it—it might get too crowded.”
Although some of the celebrities present were return visitors, like Debbie Reynolds, who honeymooned at the resort after her marriage to Eddie Fisher in 1955, it was the first visit for many others. Brook Shields said she instantly fell in love with the Mountain State. “This is my first visit to The Greenbrier, but it won’t be my last. This place is incredible.” Shields brought her husband and children, who enjoyed three days of archery, horseback riding, and falconry.
Jane Seymour, an avid outdoorswoman, also fell under the resort’s spell. “This is my first time in West Virginia. It is fabulous and incredible, and we’ll definitely be back,” says Seymour, who is best known for her television role in Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. “We’ve had the most fabulous three days. This is a great place for families. We’ve gone fly fishing, white water rafting, golfing, and I even enjoyed the spa. We’ve done everything.”
Guests, who paid $850 to $2,000 to participate in the historic night, were treated to an energetic hour-long concert by Lionel Richie. Before the concert, Justice surprised Jessica Simpson on stage with a birthday cake, who was celebrating her 30th birthday. “I didn’t know about this!” she squealed. “I know, baby,” Justice told her. “Right now my heart is beating 60,000 miles a minute.”
After the concert, cocktail waitresses dressed like Scarlett O’Hara handed out flutes of champagne as the 1,500 guests filed into the casino and stood on the sweeping staircases, where Justice and his family, Governor Manchin and the First Lady, and scores of celebrities wielded giant scissors for the official ribbon cutting.
“Today, the history and grand tradition of The Greenbrier join with the excitement of world class gaming in one of the country’s most magnificent settings,” said Justice.
The House Wins
Since Justice purchased The Greenbrier, Lady Luck has been on his side. But he will be the first to tell you that The Greenbrier cannot merely survive—it needs to thrive. “The key is to honor its history and elegance but provide amenities and that’s what the casino is—another amenity,” he says.
Justice believes that by infusing energy, offering nighttime entertainment, and improving the resort’s existing offerings—which include four golf courses, two pools, a spa, horseback riding, and several restaurants—The Greenbrier will once again become one of the country’s premier tourist destinations. He says, “The Greenbrier is on its way to greatness and beyond. Our mission is to be the best of the best and we’re gonna get it done.”
With Justice at the helm, all bets are on The Greenbrier winning big.
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