Trump’s New Big, Big Idea: Condos on the Vegas Strip

Donald Trump to Las Vegas: You’re hired!

The flamboyant real estate investor and host of the unscripted NBC show “The Apprentice” says he wants to build one of the largest condominium projects on the Las Vegas Strip. He filed plans in Clark County on Thursday to erect a $300-million, 64-story luxury tower on a 4-acre parking lot purchased from the Frontier Hotel & Casino.

The development, patterned after the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan, would boast more than 1,000 condos and hotel rooms, plus 50 penthouse-style units as large as 10,000 square feet each.

“My plan is to build a super-high-end residential tower in Las Vegas that will be the talk of the town,” he said with his characteristic aplomb. Construction is expected to start early next year.

Known for his New York real estate investments and financially troubled casinos in Atlantic City, N.J., Trump said he believed that Las Vegas was the next hot investment. Indeed, the city is among the most popular tourist and convention destinations nationally.

Helped by a slick “What happens here, stays here” advertising campaign and television programs such as NBC’s “Las Vegas” and the unscripted Fox show “The Casino,” gambling revenue on the Strip through May topped $2.2 billion. That was a 16% gain from the same period last year. Almost 16 million people visited Las Vegas during the same period, up 7% from a year earlier. Casinos are filling 90% of their rooms.

Trump said he chose the Strip because of all the recent and planned development on Las Vegas’ famous boulevard of casinos. The project site faces the entrance to Nordstrom at the newly remodeled Fashion Show Mall and is across the street from where casino mogul Steve Wynn is finishing off a $2.6-billion luxury resort.

“The properties will feed off each other,” Trump said.

Wynn might not be all that happy with the new kid on the block. In the late 1980s, Trump purchased a stake in Wynn’s Golden Nugget Inc. and threatened to acquire a controlling interest.

That purchase generated reams of publicity for the rival casino tycoons, along with some biting comments. Trump was quoted as calling Wynn a “classic underachiever,” while Wynn reportedly labeled Trump “twinkle toes.” Trump never mounted a takeover effort and eventually sold the holding.

In another deal around the same time, Trump collected nearly a $32-million profit by taking a 9.9% position in the former Bally Corp. and eventually selling the shares back to the company. That prompted Nevada lawmakers to enact regulations barring the “greenmailing” of Nevada casino companies.

Trump’s planned building would be his first Las Vegas construction project. Although he holds a Nevada gaming license, Trump doesn’t plan to put a casino on the property, making the project a pure real estate play.

Trump said he planned to finance the tower “with my own money,” and said it would be separate from his Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. in Atlantic City, which is trying to restructure a mountain of debt.

Trump Hotels faces intense competition from newer rivals in New Jersey and the proliferation of Indian gaming in neighboring states. It is negotiating a $400-million cash injection from Credit Suisse First Boston, and if the deal falls through the company could face bankruptcy, according to its accounting firm, Ernst & Young.

Those problems make it unlikely that Trump could put together a mega-resort casino project in Las Vegas, said Patricia Wright, an analyst with the Fitch Ratings corporate bond rating service in New York.

As it is, he’s going to have plenty of competition in the condo market. A 550-unit, 37-story condo tower at the MGM Grand is sold out. MGM Mirage, the casino’s owner, is in the middle of selling the second tower and has four more planned.

“I probably have 30 high- rises either under construction, breaking ground or in plan review,” said Ron Lynn, director of the Clark County building department.

Trump said his tower would be the “tallest building in Las Vegas,” topping out at 645 feet -- even taller than Wynn’s new hotel. But Trump must have left his tape measure in Atlantic City: The Stratosphere, just a hop, skip and a jump from the project site, measures 1,149 feet.