Heavy swing attracts people to Vantaa's new Vegas on Fridays
Flamingo's early popularity based on company outings and local residents
By Riku Jokinen
Where have all these people come here from?
Ladies in fancy dresses and corporate serfs in business jackets and ties are gathering together, and there is even a pink stetson glittering on the dance-floor.
Under the flashing neon lights, one can read the words ”Elvis”, ”Drinks”, ”Flamingo”.
But this is all yet to come - we will have to let things take their own course.
Around noon last Friday the corridors of Vantaa’s new Flamingo entertainment centre were still silent.
Flamingo is spoken about as Vantaa’s Las Vegas, but when walking along the corridors they remind one of a shopping mall, or a ferry to Sweden - without the lurching caused by a late autumn storm.
The contrast is stunning when one leaves the corridor and goes to the glow-in-the-dark indoor miniature golf course on the second floor.
A total of 15 crazy-golf holes churn out sound effects of rifle shots, police whistles, and snatches of the US national anthem. People have to queue up to play.
Families with children have more or less captured the downstairs spa with its indoor water park, and a bunch of little children are staring in awe at an almost vertical kamikaze slide.
Soon two daddies wearing helmets explode out of the pipe and plunge into the water. Yelling with childish excitement, the two gents show each other their torn swimming trunks.
Some gangs of workmates have taken the other end of the spa, to which part under-20-year-olds have no access.
”If you see any good-looking chicks, drop me a hint”, one of the men says.
Another man says that he is attending an occupational health day, though it sounds a good deal more like a stock pre-Christmas office party.
Initially, the aim was to build only a swimming pool or a spa next to the Jumbo shopping mall, but the plan got somewhat out of hand.
In addition to the spa, the complex houses a hotel, a nightclub, a bowling hall, some specialty stores, a car dealership, and some restaurants and bars.
The inspiration for the Flamingo Vantaa came from the Flamingo Las Vegas, a hotel-casino that was opened by the famous mobster Benjamin ”Bugsy” Siegel in Nevada in 1946.
The Vantaa version was not set up in the middle of the desert, but in the neighbourhood of a network of shopping centres by Kehä III, the Outer Ring Road.
Neiher is the person behind the Flamingo complex any member of an organised crime family from New York, but an ordinary K-shopkeeper.
Matti Himberg, the owner of the K-Citymarket (a supermarket located in the Jumbo shopping centre), and his partners acquired a plot of land next to Jumbo in 2003, and applied for a zoning permit. The building itself is owned by the pension insurance company Varma.
Today, Himberg runs the spa and has a stake in several restaurants.
”The project was worth the effort. The restaurants and the spa are all doing well, and the hotel is fully booked”, reports Himberg.
Nevertheless, there is still some room for improvement. The number of restaurants is too small, and some of the premises reserved for specialty stores have remained empty and unrented, while not all stores have been selling as well as could be expected.
”The machinery just needs lubricating”, describes entertainment centre manager Leila Nuuttila.
Moreover, the predicted Russian influx is still to materialise - that will not come before year's end.
The executives who run the establishment have not yet received accurate information about the visitors to the entertainment complex.
However, based on gut instinct, the visitors are business travellers, occupational groups, families with children, and people from the neighbouring areas of Vantaa.
The targeted number of visitors amounts to around three million people a year.
Two heavily-built types are already throwing punches at each other, even though it is only 10:00 p.m.
Luckily, it is just a boxing match on the big screen on the back wall of the bowling hall.
The heart of the entertainment world’s nightlife is the Flamigo Club, owned by restaurateur Seppo ”Sedu” Koskinen, who came up with the entire Las Vegas theme in the first place.
According to restaurant manager Jani Avelin, the record for the autumn is 3,500 visitors in a night, which is more than any ferry to Sweden can accommodate.
The Las Vegas-style nightclub has two large floors, a heated terrace, and naturally a wedding chapel, where it is possible to hire Elvis to conduct the ceremony.
It is difficult to move about in the club already before the clock ticks around to midnight.
However, not everybody is so enthusiastic about the Flamingo Club.
A man sitting in a café outside the nightclub is unstinting in his criticism of the noise, calling the place ”an auditive crematorium”.
The taxi queue outside during the early hours of the morning is similar to all other taxi lines at this hour anywhere in the world.
One man is asking for trouble for a while, practically begging to get hit, and then he does an abrupt volte-face, shouting: "I will never come here any more. You can't get laid here".
During the Christmas party season, disturbances and fights at the Flamingo have been the talk of the town.
According to Chief Inspector Maarit Pikkarainen from the Vantaa police, around a dozen emergency calls from Flamingo were recorded in September-October and another 22 in November.
A peak occurred over the weekend before last, when the number of emergency calls was eight. A week later the corresponding figure was only four.
Typically, the reason for calling in the cavalry is an individual who behaves in an aggressive way and whom the security men have to arrest.
Police will then take the brawler to a lock-up for the night or see him or her to a taxi. For some reason, the most critical place seems to be a taxi stand.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.12.2008
Previously in HS International Edition:
Flamingo Entertainment Centre to be completed ahead of schedule (19.8.2008)
Links:
Flamingo website (in Finnish)
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 9.12.2008 - THIS WEEK |
Heavy swing attracts people to Vantaa's new Vegas on Fridays
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