He’s definitely not the latter, even if we’re only counting the nine years in which he owned the erstwhile Frontier, rechristened the New Frontier upon his takeover. The Amarillo-born Wichita-based billionaire is no stranger to gambling, either in or out of Las Vegas.
Among Phillip Ruffin’s many holdings is Wichita Greyhound Park, a currently defunct dog-racing track. The mogul pulled the plug on the parimutuel in August 2007, after it became clear that the Kansas Legislature wouldn’t allow him to have slot machines at the track. (Conversion to a Trump-branded racino was planed, had the vote gone favorably.)
Ruffin hasn’t given up hope, however, and re-floats the idea from time to time. "I didn’t want to see the people lose their jobs that had been there forever," he told KSN-TV in Wichita. "That was a disappointment to me." He also tinkered with another defunct track, in Frontenac, Kan., before giving up on that as well; now he calls the parimutuel business "the worst business you could get into."
He’s also operated a casino in the Bahamas, the Nassau Marriott Resort & Crystal Palace Casino, which he purchased in 1993 and sold in 2005. It was not Vegas-scale and inhabited a more difficult market, but it gave Ruffin a taste of the casino biz and whetted his appetite for more.
The Wichita Greyhound Park and Frontier purchases followed four years later. He also made a $40 million offer for the then-Binion’s Horseshoe Club (now Binion’s Gambling Hall) in 1998, but it was rejected by Jack Binion. Binion also passed on an opportunity to redevelop the New Frontier in tandem with Ruffin.
By 1959, Ruffin had parlayed a Wichita truck stop –- bought with money borrowed from his dad -- into a tri-state empire of 61 Total-branded convenience stores and self-service gas stations. Kansas oil wells, office buildings, warehouses, industrial parks, a bank, a dairy, and at least 14 hotels spread across five states. His Harper Trucks grew to encompass one-third of the U.S. hand-truck market. And that’s but a partial listing of Ruffin’s ventures.
Not bad for a college dropout who, according to Forbes, abandoned Washburn University in favor of running a couple of hamburger stands, then rolled his salary into buying real estate. "When I was in Houston, I had to go borrow $100 from the bank," he said of his hardscrabble beginnings. "I had 28 cents." Last year, Ruffin clocked in at #215 on the Forbes 400, with a net worth of $2.1 billion. He’s also a two-time winner of the 400’s charity poker tournament (beating last-minute ‘ringer’ Annie Duke on one occasion) and, as of May 2008, owned five homes, including two in Vegas.
Ruffin’s first blip on Vegas’ radar occurred on Oct. 28, 1997, when news broke that he’d cut a $167 million deal with the Elardi family to purchase the Frontier. Since the Frontier was being picketed by the Culinary Union and the strike had dragged on for six-plus years, Ruffin’s gaming application moved forward at express speed: He was licensed in 10 weeks and took over the casino on Feb. 1, 1998.
Settling the Frontier strike was, Ruffin now says, "the key to the deal." He reinstated 280 striking employees with full seniority and back pay. Once he had the keys, Ruffin found "an aging old lady" with 169 leaks in the roof. Explaining the purchase at the time, he told the Las Vegas Sun, "We don’t have a five-year plan. We just go where the good deals are." He also promised to "do something unusual here." Unlike labor peace, this was a promise on which Ruffin was unable to deliver.
He tinkered with various reinventions of the New Frontier. At first, he planned to rebrand the property as a Radisson. That scheme was scrapped partway through a property upgrade meant to bring the place into conformity with Radission’s specifications.
Then, in January 2000, Ruffin announced the New Frontier would be imploded to make way for City by the Bay. It was to feature sea lions, a wave-making machine and a miniature version of Alcatraz. But Wall Street was skeptical of Ruffin’s cash-flow projections. A$900 million lawsuit was filed by a rival developer further complicated matters.
By May, it was back to business as usual at the New Frontier. Sun reporter Liz Benston would subsequently describe the atmosphere there as that of "a humble property, its casino carpet held together with masking tape and a marquee advertising $1.99 margaritas and $9.95 steak and shrimp dinners … [a] loud, tackily dressed uncle crashing a fancy cocktail party."
In April 2002, Ruffin was back with a proposed $800 million/1,500-room resort, to be erected just north of the New Frontier with an unspecified hotel company as partner. That, too, went nowhere, as did an attempted purchase by Harrah’s.
Ruffin tried again in March 2005, announcing a $1.3 billion/3,000-room megaresort, eventually dubbed "Montreux." The scale of the project soon expanded by 500 rooms and $300 million, and work was to begin in early 2006. The official rendering of Montreux bore a striking resemblance to Bellagio, garnished with such add-ons as a giant Ferris wheel, a Golden Door spa and a reincarnation of New Frontier mainstay Gilley’s Saloon, home of the mechanical bull.
Thirteen months later, Ruffin was still trying to put a deal together. But a glut of projects along the Strip had driven construction prices upward and Montreux’s budget had now reached the $2 billion threshold -- later escalating to $2.7 billion. Ruffin would subsequently disclose that he’d have needed to turn an annual profit of $300 million to make Montreux pencil out and didn’t think it feasible. He also feared that, if he didn’t sell the site, a capital-gains tax increase would cut into the profitability of flipping it.
Two years to the month after Montreux was announced, Ruffin told the Sun he was dickering with El Ad Properties to sell the New Frontier site for a mind-boggling $40 million per acre – double what Ruffin himself had said the land was worth a couple of years earlier. He didn’t get that much and negotiations broke down at one point, just as Ruffin was about to catch a flight to Israel to finalize the deal.
But Ruffin’s eventual $1.24 billion, $36 million/acre payday would be the high-water mark for Strip real estate. El Ad swiftly moved to close and demolish the place … only to find that it couldn’t raise the capital to rebuild on the site. Meanwhile, Ruffin was laughing all the way to the bank.
One of the few times Ruffin has come a-cropper was his joint venture with Donald Trump to build a condo-hotel in an off-Strip location behind the the New Frontier. "Designed to be the most opulent condominium hotel ever built in Las Vegas -- if not the entire world," according to publicity materials, Trump International broke ground on July 12, 2005, three years after it had been announced – a delay that enabled other condo developers to steal a march on Ruffin and Trump.
At that time the world was grandly informed that, "Although all units in the Trump International Hotel & Tower Las Vegas have been reserved, prospective buyers are still invited to register their names, in the event that a few units become available for sale in the future."
Such pompous overreach would accentuate the project’s subsequent flop. At its completion, Trump proclaimed that it was "virtually" sold out – a claim that was approximately 75% short of the truth. The project’s cost, however, had ballooned from an initial $300 million to a final $1.2 billion. Later, in the wake of his Treasure Island purchase, Ruffin would admit that the Las Vegas condo market was "dead" and that Trump International would be converted to a pure hotel property. A planned second tower has quietly been scrapped.
The New Frontier sale, however, was a home run. El Ad Properties bought for $36 million an acre land for which Ruffin had paid $4 million/acre in 1998. After signing off on a $171 million-plus tax bill on his New Frontier payout (Ruffin had a copy of the check framed and hung in his office), the diabetic billionaire bought a second corporate jet.
Then he put his money into municipal bonds – and got bored. "I’m not an investor," he recently told Steve Friess. "I don’t like that." Hence the Treasure Island acquisition. One of the attractions for Ruffin was that MGM Mirage had recently spent $83 million to refurbish the property, so he wouldn’t need to do any fixing up. He kicked the tires of the Sahara but didn’t like the location and ran the numbers of The Mirage before deciding it was too rich for his blood.
It’s not gone unnoticed that Ruffin himself has undergone a makeover in recent years. During his New Frontier days, he worked without ostentation out of a bland office with decrepit furniture. But at the opening of Trump International, the Sun noted that he was "last seen wearing chinos and a polo shirt, plucking nickels off the carpet at the New Frontier before he sold it for $1.2 billion. Now he’s in business with Trump and dressed in a tailored suit, wearing sunglasses inside" and accompanied by new wife Oleksandra Nikolayenko Ruffin. The former Miss Ukraine 2001, who married the aging billionaire a year ago at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, is 46 years his junior.
Ruffin has three children from his first marriage, all of whom run various branches of his business empire. As for his affinity for the casino business, he demurs, "It’s not glamorous. It’s what I do."
