Vol. 5, No. 7, July 2008
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Every Rung of the Ladder
He started his career climb at the Golden Nugget, Resorts and Trump Marina in Atlantic City. Now Paul Ryan has a real Fantasy job in California.
It seems appropriate that Paul Ryan is reaping the rewards of the gaming industry. He was one of its original lobbyists.
The Brigantine native helped Local 54 solicit support for the gambling referendum in 1976. Now, after a long stint at Resorts, the Golden Nugget and Trump Marina, Ryan is general manager for Fantasy Springs Resort Hotel and Casino in Indio, California.
With a wealth of experience in food and beverage and hotel operations, the gaming veteran enjoys a rich career.
“Casinos have been good to a lot of us,” he says.
Ryan was good to the business first. He invested in the process when gaming was simply a proposal.
“Some great things happened right at the beginning, like carrying signs, distributing buttons and doing everything we could do to help the referendum get through,” he says. “It really worked out. When gambling came to town, it was magical. We saw tremendous social change. All of us socialized in AC and worked in AC.”
Before heading to Resorts as vice president of hotel ops and Trump Marina as COO, he gained an extensive education in food and beverage at the Nugget.
“It is an area of tremendous discipline,” Ryan says. “It also has many moving parts. There is so much inventory. You learn purchasing, how to move product, how to store product, unique scheduling needs, etc. It had a financial component, too. You had so many different outlets, the pricing matrix and the cost of sales. The mechanics of food and beverage gave you such a great amount of knowledge.”
Ryan got further seasoning by working with unions. Because he’d been in one and respected its leadership, he developed the ability to view them as partners, not adversaries. That became important in day-to-day operations. He also let the experts in each department lead the way.
“I had always been hands-on in the other departments, but as a VP of hotel ops, I had never checked a guest in,” he says. “At the first staff meeting, I realized there were 15 people there and every one of them knew their job better than I did. For the first time, I realized you need to be dependent on people. There’s nothing wrong with that. The goal now is to always be surrounded by people who are better than I am. As long as you know what your goals are and get them achieved, that formula works for you.”
Though he later went to Trump Marina and helped usher in its Rock the Dock era, Ryan was proud of his Resorts stint. Before he left, the casino hit an unprecedented high of $53 million EBIDTA (earnings before interest, depreciation, taxes and amortization).
“We went over the $50 million mark on New Year’s Eve; it was great drama for us,” he says.
Atlantic City sharpened Ryan, making him an ideal fit in other markets.
“It was the most competitive, most difficult market you could manage,” he says. “You have 11 properties trying to grab the $5 billion pie. It was an intense level of competition. That’s why Atlantic City people are in demand.”
Like the early days of Atlantic City, Fantasy Springs is a wide-open book in which to write a story.
“Coming here, you see a property with great potential, but it lacked an identity,” Ryan says. “It didn’t have a brand, the way MGM has entertainment, the way Showboat has Mardi Gras. We looked at it, realized we had a 100,000-square-foot events center, and turned it into a theater. We got into the headliner biz.”
Ryan ran a celebrity golf tournament involving pro athletes at Fantasy Springs’ Eagle Falls course in early June. The last weekend of June, the tournament will be televised on Fox TV’s Best Damn Sports Show.
Eagle Falls had to be unique in order to shine. It was 130th course built in an acknowledged golf paradise.
“How do you build number 130? You build the best one,” Ryan says. “We took advantage of the flat landscape. The course has tremendous elevation changes, Scottish bunkers, English rock walls and a 40-foot waterfall on the 18th hole that is beyond words. And, you can play a golf tournament with major stars and never be concerned about the weather.”
He wouldn’t anyway. Ryan’s career disposition has been 80 and sunny.
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