An LED wall and glittering chandelier greets guests.

The bulk of Paradise Island is Atlantis, Kerzner International’s sprawling, 2,917-room resort, which over 10 years has single-handedly revitalized the Bahamanian economy, accounting for 12% of the gross national product. And the bulk of Atlantis is for the traveling American family, with a 63-acre network of water slides and inner tube rapids, and tanks full of hulking, blinking sea creatures.

But Paradise Island is also where key scenes in the latest James Bond flick were filmed, a lush slice of the Caribbean that has as much natural appeal for the jet-setting couple as it does for the fannypack set – maybe even more.

To capture that market, Kerzner created The Cove, a 600-suite, on-property luxury hotel tower meant to compete with Las Vegas and Miami, rather than Disney and Hershey. From the vaulted open-air lobby to the serene stark-white pool to the in-room Starbucks and plasma TVs, the experience is quintessentially upscale. And wrist-banded separation from the sweaty masses over at the main Atlantis complex only heightens the feeling of exclusivity.

All that it needed was – you guessed it – a proper place to party.

“Entertainment, especially nightclubs, is critical to the success of the modern-day hotel,” says Steve Davidovici, managing partner of Vegas-based Pure Management Group (PMG). “We’ve seen this movement of club development become very prevalent in the Vegas market, and continue to see it grow outside of Nevada.”

PMG should know: Starting with its namesake club, Pure, at Caesar’s Palace, the company has helped usher in the new era of Las Vegas nightlife, one based on celebrity hosts rather than DJs; bottle service; and big, multi-room venues to accommodate big, diverse crowds. PMG has a total of eight venues across five hotels in Vegas, with three more set to open by fall, including LAX, a 50,000-square-foot club complex in the Luxor, co-owned by DJ AM.

At the behest of Atlantis CEO George Markantonis, PMG developed a nightclub concept to hit The Cove’s sweet spot. They enlisted members of their Vegas team, including The Wave (sound), Neu Visions Design (dancefloor lighting), Focus Lighting (architectural lighting) and Jeffrey Beers International (interior design), and exported former MGM Grand nightlife director Candace Carrell to serve as GM.

The resulting nightclub, Aura, sits just off the casino floor, a little bit of Sin City right in the heart of Paradise. Guests get the same music, atmosphere, gracious and gorgeous bottle servers, carefully crafted specialty cocktails, even the faraway chink-chink of slot machines that they’d find in a Vegas hotspot.

An LED wall and glittering chandelier greets guests.

Bulletproof Beauty
“Aura has the elements of a mega-club and ultra-lounge scaled to a 6,000-square-foot space,” says Neu Visions’ Adam Camp. “There is a massive amount of technology packed into that shell.”

The single-room club boasts an immersive Color Kinetics LED system that dominates the walls, two High End Systems DL2 digital lights, a Turbosound/Crown Audio sound system processed by BSS Soundweb London, and all the bells and whistles of a major-city nightclub.

“My initial directives were to design a Pure-type club, but also to make it as bulletproof as possible, as service and logistics are more difficult in the Bahamas,” said Wave president Scott Fisher.

Patrons access the main room via a dramatically tall staircase, accented overhead by a dangling crystal/fiberoptic chandelier, and to the side by a large frosted glass wall backlit by Color Kinetics iFlex LED nodes. The sounds of the dancefloor reach outside via four TCS C50T speakers from Turbosound, Fisher’s longtime preferred brand.

Once inside, the sensory onslaught is total, with every corner of the club visible from every other. Certain features – an egg-shaped VIP “room,” elevated off the dancefloor; mirror-paneled bottle displays behind the bar – are more than a bit reminiscent of Beers’ design for the original ultra-lounge, MGM Grand’s Tabu. But their interpretation here is macro, bulked up to properly serve a dance club, instead of a lounge.

The dancefloor, in fact, dominates the room – smartly sunken to avoid traffic jams, and rimmed with tables, but not so densely that the bottle-less seem crushed.

Overhead, four “motion grids,” fabricated locally with three-inch steel pipe, do the work of truss (“I hate truss,” says Camp). They raise and lower with Show Distribution’s Chain Master motors, for easy service on the large collection of lights and speakers hanging from them.

The grids contain 12 Martin Professional MAC550 moving heads “for the linear animation effects,” 12 Robe Color Wash 575 AT Zoom moving heads “for the ability to have a tight beam or flooded wash,” and Martin Atomic Color Strobes “for some accents,” says Camp. It also bears eight Turbosound TQ 315 and six TQ 308 speakers, matched with four TSW 218 subs on the ground, two at each end of the dancefloor. (Eight additional ceiling-mounted TQ 308s ring the dancefloor and the main bar.)

Fisher says he took more than just audio quality into account while determining speaker placement. “Sometimes, in the short run, it may cost more to hang a speaker, but in the long run it is cheaper,” he says. “For example, I take a subwoofer off the floor and hang it. It takes more speakers to achieve the same output, but now we can put another table on the dancefloor. That table sells for $700 a night, three nights a week, 51 weeks a year. You do the math as to what actually costs more.”

Also up on the grid are Aura’s “crown jewels,” according to Camp: Those DL2s. “For the early evening we use them as projectors, creating landscapes on the back bar and creating animated Aura logos in the opposing VIP space,” he says. “As the energy builds and the venue packs up, the units become high-powered moving light, creating amazing aerial projection effects. They’re also versatile for special events and corporate buy-outs, providing branding opportunities.”

But Aura’s defining feature is its complex LED system, designed by Focus Lighting, configured by Focus’ Kelly Hannon to play nice with the dancefloor rig (and to run off its fully loaded Wholehog PC controller), and programmed in interactive timed sequences by Neu Visions. “The sequences begin around midnight, making the walls just one more layer and accent to the music,” says Camp. “It really brings the club to life.”

Behind striking, frosted glass walls, which are scattered throughout the venue – at the entry staircase, in the elevated VIP area, and behind the DJ booth – are embedded Color Kinetics iColor Coves. Each one-inch unit is individually controlled with the company’s Light System Manager, and triggered by the Hog. The constant motion of the lights adds an additional presence to the room, one that’s alternately soothing and energizing.

Between the LED walls, the DL2s, and the moving lights, “Aura is an amazing playground for a programmer,” says Camp, “and it will continue to evolve over the years.”

The Total Package
For now, Aura is relying on slick mash-up and Top 40 DJs to satisfy its crowd of privileged tourists and trust-fund-kid locals (drinking age in the Bahamas is 18), but international house DJ bookings are in its future. And why not? This is a great room, a rare combination of schmaltz and proper dance space. Erick Morillo, it’s calling your name.

But for all its special physical features, Davidovici says that the intangibles set Aura apart. “The most important ‘Vegas element’ is service,” he says. “Anyone can build a beautiful nightclub, but it is the experience. At PMG, we pride ourselves on the VIP treatment of every guest.”

As an extension of both The Cove and Pure, Aura doesn’t lack a single high-end accoutrement, and juxtaposes the family fun of Atlantis just as intended. On a Saturday night in July, the DJ gracefully segued from hip-hop set to dance set via Justin Timberlake, and vacationing suburbanites swilled thousand-dollar champagne next to vacationing royalty, while LEDs glowed, logos twirled, bass boomed and lights flashed. One thing was sure: No one was thinking about water slides.

www.thecoveatlantis.com

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