TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/040990/0409270.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.8 KB | 143 lines

                                                                                TRAVEL, Page 75

A Candymaker Went Mad


Donald Trump unveils his newest attraction -- and biggest gamble
yet

By NANCY GIBBS -- Reported by Sue Raffety/Atlantic City


    "It was the Ivory Gate through which all good dreams come
true it seemed the embodiment of all things pure, all things
holy, and all things unhappy."

    -- Rudyard Kipling, describing the original Taj Mahal


    When Donald Trump decided to acquire his own Taj Mahal,
purity, holiness and unhappiness were certainly the last things
on his mind. Trump's tastes run more toward grandiosity ("the
eighth wonder of the world"), hyperbole ("totally unique") and
wishful thinking ("the crowds are going to be so big, you won't
be able to get into the place"). India's Taj Mahal took 22
years and more than 20,000 workmen to build. Trump's Atlantic
City version took only eight years and 1,800 laborers. But
Trump cedes nothing to the original structure. He claims to have
built "the largest (and most expensive) casino resort,
convention center and entertainment complex constructed at one
time," a great, glittery gumdrop on the Atlantic Ocean. India's
Taj is, after all, just a tomb.

    This week the boy builder will cut the ribbon on his newest
playground with the help, boasts he, of Michael Jackson, Liza
Minnelli, but not Marla Maples, the mystery model at the center
of the now legendary (and thoroughly tedious) Trump divorce.
Roughly 1,800 reporters, photographers and media types will
come to ogle "The Donald's" creation -- all 420 million sq. ft.
of it, all $1 billion worth, all designed by an architect no
one has heard of, in a city no one wants to live in. "It's a
billion-dollar hotel," thumps Trump, "and it looks it."

    Approached from the boardwalk, the facade of the Taj Mahal
actually looks edible, the work of a candymaker gone mad. The
building sprawls along 17 beach-front acres, resembling a vast
white meringue, iced with 70 fruit-flavored minarets and topped
off with dribbles of gold. Peppermint lampposts line walkways
that are guarded by nine stone elephants, among the very few
decorative items on the property that are not fiberglass. The
sculptors made sure the trunks swooped upward, an Indian sign
for good luck. "We're striving for authenticity," explains
architect Francis Xavier Dumont, 34, "where guests will feel
like they're visiting a land far away."

    Any number of lands, in fact, ranging from India (the New
Delhi Deli) and Italy (the Marco Polo eatery) to the Far East
(the Dynasty restaurant)  and something vaguely resembling the
old Belgian Congo (the Safari Steakhouse). The decor inside the
hotel is a giddy clash between the Forbidden City and
Disneyland, in which virtually everything is either pink or
purple -- unless it's gold. There are pink acoustic-tile
ceilings, pink slot machines, pink Louis XV chairs in the
reception area. There is a pink motorcycle parked in the '50s
diner called Rock and Rolls, and there are pink chandeliers in
Scheherazade, the restaurant overlooking the baccarat pit. (The
Scheherazade is conveniently located so that gamblers below can
order whatever they fancy and then gulp down dinner without
taking their eyes off the tables.)

    At the center of it all is the 120,000-sq.-ft. casino, a
space as defiant of convention as it is of taste. Dumont has
spurned the dark burgundies and jangling reds of most gambling
halls in favor of a color scheme heavy on violet, turquoise,
melon and, of course, bubble-gum pink. As reflected in the
mirrored, barrel-vaulted ceilings, the honeycombed carpets seem
to vibrate. Twenty-four hand-carved Austrian-crystal
chandeliers (at $250,000 apiece) dangle in the vaults like
melting diamond slush, creating the impression that at any
minute one of the sparkling crystals might drip down into some
overeager gambler's decolletage.

    The theme suites upstairs are equally preposterous:
gold-sprinkled carpets, Jacuzzis in the bedrooms, Egyptian
murals in the Cleopatra suite, cherubim on the ceiling of the
Michelangelo suite and, in the King Tut suite, lots of the sort
of bric-a-brac a king likes to be buried with. Prices start at
$250 a night for 1,200 sq. ft.  and run to $10,000 for the
4,200-sq.-ft. Alexander the Great suite. But costs are
incidental, since most of these luxury accommodations are
reserved, on the house, for high rollers. "It has the most
beautiful suites that have been built in any hotel," puffs
Trump. "And I'm not just talking about Atlantic City."

    Whether it all succeeds, of course, depends on whether
enough people agree with Trump, especially the high rollers and
conventioneers whom Trump must separate from their money if his
grandiose endeavor is to succeed. The whole point of the Taj
Mahal to create enough ballrooms, exhibition space and hype to
lure conventions away from places like Orlando, Las Vegas and
New Orleans. But analysts give Trump's gamble long odds. To
begin with, the weather in February is less than hospitable,
and the Taj is hard to get to from most parts of the country.
Traffic congeals on summer weekends, train service is poor, and
the airport lacks a real passenger terminal. Costs are high,
says Paine Webber analyst Lee Isgur, "because basically New
Jersey is a scummy place for unions and bureaucracy." The
present mayor has been indicted for corruption and influence
peddling, the fourth of the past six incumbents to be charged
with a crime.

    Experts agree that Trump will have to struggle to clear the
million dollars a day -- some say as high as $1.2 million --
he will need just to keep up payments on his $675 million debt.
"I am concerned about the staying power of the Taj in the
winter months," says Marvin B. Roffman, until last week a
respected gaming analyst for Janney Montgomery Scott in
Philadelphia. "In a slow economy, I have reservations of
whether he can break even." Trump does not take kindly to such
warnings. When Roffman offered his analysis to the Wall Street
Journal, calling Atlantic City "an ugly and dreary kind of
place," Trump threatened Janney Montgomery with a lawsuit
unless Roffman apologized or was fired. In a stunning testimony
to Trump's power and Janney Montgomery's cowardice, Roffman was
dismissed. The firm explains that the analyst consistently
broke the rules about speaking to the press without clearance.

    Trump's heavy-handed gag order belied his sunny predictions
for the Taj. But he dismisses the notion that he is at any
risk. "People think I'm a gambler," he once observed. "I've
never gambled in my life. To me, a gambler is someone who plays
slot machines. I prefer to own slot machines. It's a very good
business being the house." Unless, of course, it's a house of
cards, teetering in a strong Atlantic wind.