Bob Stupak surveys his realm, the $550 million Stratosphere Tower, Hotel and Casino that rises 1,149 ft. above Las Vegas like a gleaming blue syringe in the neon night sky. For a moment, his taste of triumph is soured by a nagging memory. "A few days ago," the 54-year-old entrepreneur says, "I had a nightmare that the tower was cracking and starting to lean. Luckily, I woke up before it fell over. Which I guess means something is going on self-consciously."
Self-conscious? Stupak? Even in Vegas, city of naked, naive ambition, where the gods Whim and Ego bestride the Strip and hubris is just Greek for chutzpah, Stupak is a figure of such bejeweled swagger that confessing a nightmare of disaster-movie proportions can seem like a boast. The dream speaks to the compulsive gambler's fear of winning what he most desires, while planning even gaudier schemes. "Tell your editors that I'll donate $1 million to their favorite charity," he barks at a Time reporter, "if they put my picture on the corner of the cover. Two million for the full cover. And that's negotiable."
Among Vegas' poker-faced master builders--Steve Wynn of the Mirage and Treasure Island, Bill Bennett of Circus Circus--Stupak is something of a wild card, a joke or a curse, a relic of the days when the town was run by guys whose middle name was "the." He enjoys banter about guns, was almost cast in Martin Scorsese's gangster epic Casino, and still refers to Mob characters like "Lefty" Rosenthal and Tony (the Ant) Spilotro as "the boys."
While Wynn and Bennett were Disneyfying the Strip with automated pirate shows and indoor theme parks, he catered to blue-collar gamblers at Bob Stupak's Vegas World, using vacation packages to fill the tacky rooms and move the garbage buffet. (In 1991 he was fined $125,000 for misleading advertising.) But now Stupak is playing with the big boys. He wants to stay at the table and to be seen betting all his chips. "I know one thing," he says. "It's better for people to know you than not to know you. To be in Las Vegas, you have to be different--outrageous."
This week the outrageous Mr. Stupak unveils his outsize, outlandish, outer-space vision in an orgasmic burst of fireworks and flackery. The fourth tallest building in the U.S. (fifth, if you count the World Trade Center twice), the Stratosphere opens with 1,500 rooms and 97,000 sq. ft. of casino space, and a promenade with a handsomely designed World's Fair theme. By year's end Stupak hopes to have completed an additional 1,000 rooms, a retail mall, a giant pool and a King Kong-size gorilla ride--a 70-ft.-high mechanical ape that will climb up the building with happily terrified passengers inside.
But Kong is for later. The Stratosphere's immediate and unique enticement is the 12-level, spaceship-shaped "pod" at the top of the tower. Along with the conference rooms, wedding chapels and inevitable revolving restaurant there is an observation deck whose huge slanted windows allow you to lean over and peek at the ground; because the building's spine is barely visible beneath, you feel you are hovering over Vegas in the Enterprise. Ascending three more levels, you find two things that no one before Stupak thought to put atop a skyscraper: a roller coaster and a space-launch reverse-bungee jump.