Down on the street, the smoking grind of summer traffic and tourists on this part of the Boulevard is something even the most creative casino industry marketing maven would have trouble turning into an inviting TV spot.
Still more seedy than seamless, the metaphorical gateway from the Strip to downtown at Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue remains a work in progress. It isn’t where it needs to be.
But it also isn’t where it once was. Many of the down-at-the-heels motels in the area have either spruced up or transitioned out. Even a jaundiced eye can see it’s improving. Although the corners still appear to be years away from being called overly inviting; when a supermarket-sized pharmacy is considered a major improvement in an area fond of calling itself the “Entertainment Capital of the World,” you may be aiming low.
But then, if every corner on the Boulevard were like those on the Strip’s south end, there’d be no real story. On the north end, it’s always taken real vision, and even a little grit to bet on the future. It’s one of the things that originally attracted me, more than two decades ago, to Bob Stupak’s downright insane dream of constructing the tallest tower west of the Mississippi in the Stratosphere.
The Pittsburgh-born Stupak, who died at 67 in 2009, lived what a press release spinner would call a “colorful life.” He was, in fact, a gambler’s son and a gambler at heart who to my knowledge didn’t miss a single item on the Las Vegas all-you-can-eat buffet of hedonism. A high school dropout, he was schooled on the street and learned from his father, “Little Chester” Stupak, a Steel City gambling club operator.
I chronicled his crazy life in my 1997 book No Limit: The Rise and Fall of Bob Stupak and Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower. True to his nature, Bob tried to bribe me to kill the project. Failing that, at he tried to spin it into a commercial for his latest venture.
Bob was not ready for prime time on the Strip – even his best friends knew that, and acknowledged it, privately – but he was the perfect guy to take on the seemingly impossible project of making a casino work on the downtown side of the Boulevard.
He took real estate that had been a used-car lot and built on it a cheesy “Bob Stupak’s World Famous Million-Dollar Historic Museum and Casino” in 1974. The only thing hot about the property was the fact it caught fire, burned, and was replaced with “Bob Stupak’s Vegas World”.
Not sure, but I think there might still be a picture of Vegas World in Webster’s next to the word “gaudy.” It was riddled with space themes and casino games with rules that were just a little different from the competition. He regularly raised eyebrows and ran afoul of state gaming regulators.
Stupak did everything to attract attention to Vegas World but jump off the building. He hired a certifiably crazy Native American guy to do that as a publicity stunt.
Stupak begged and borrowed and likely violated securities regulations to get the Stratosphere built. Then he put carnival rides on top — pure Bob.
Like Sinatra, he did it his way.
Of course, I didn’t say it was always the right way.
By the time the Stratosphere opened, the gambling man had hustled his way right out of the executive office of the wonderfully overstated casino property that opened in 1996 and changed the city’s skyline forever.
That was also pure Bob. He had the nerve of a Top Gun pilot, but the business instincts of a kamikaze pilot.
Just last week a press release crossed my desk. Golden Entertainment, Nevada’s largest slot-route operator, known best for its PT’s bar chain, has agreed to purchase American Casino & Entertainment Properties. Among American’s holdings: the Stratosphere.
The deal, if completed, promises great things not only for Golden, but for the Stratosphere and the downtown side of the Boulevard as well, at a time of economic resurgence in Las Vegas.
Golden’s board includes casino industry Hall of Famer Lyle Berman, and that’s a good thing. Berman was an early investor in the Stratosphere, knew its business potential, and surely appreciates its importance on that remarkable street of dreams.
You’ll hear cheers every night on the heart of the Strip, and that’s to be expected.
But locals can’t help but root for the north end of the Boulevard.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
