Can Glenn Straub save Atlantic City?

ATLANTIC CITY - Glenn Straub has a broken bone that's just not fitting into his schedule.

It's an odd lump on the 69-year-old Florida billionaire's shoulder, some cracked something from a few months back that he never got checked out and probably won't. He figures that it's healing on its own or that he'll probably break it again, the same way he did before, playing full-contact polo atop 1,000-pound thoroughbreds with other wealthy men in tony ZIP codes.

"Yeah, I fell off a horse for like the 47th time or something and broke something, but I don't have time to get it fixed," he says, a West Virginia drawl still deep in his voice. "I've had broken shoulders, ribs and all kinds of dumbass things."

Glenn Straub's no dumbass, though. The conversation about his gnarled shoulder and his dangerous hobby is taking place on a leather couch in the top deck of the Triumphant Lady, his 155-foot mega-yacht that's been docked in Atlantic City for most of the year. The yacht has staff who ask if you'd like bottled water, sparkling, or something stronger, and it has coffee-table books about horses and sculptures both big enough to anchor the Lady in place.

Straub walks through the yacht, grabs some M&Ms from his candy dish and heads up to the bow past the glass-bottom hot tub on the deck and shows you the reason he's in town: the Revel hotel and casino, rising up in the distance along the Boardwalk like a silvery 710-foot shark fin.

Built for a mind-boggling $2.5 billion, the Revel was open for less than two years before closing along with other casinos up and down the Boardwalk. If Atlantic City were dying a slow death - becoming "Detroit with a Boardwalk," as one magazine called it - the Revel would have been its gleaming tombstone.

Straub, always bronzed from South Florida life, scooped it up for $82 million, finalizing the deal in April, because that's what Glenn Straub does. And he has plans, all sorts of plans, for the Revel and the city around it. They include water slides, zip lines, snowboard half-pipes, universities, music festivals and horses - whole herds of horses on the beaches, on race tracks and, if he has his way, even inside the iconic Boardwalk Hall. He'd like to buy Boardwalk Hall first, then Bader Field, a 142-acre former airport in Atlantic City's back bay.

Straub's confident about his plans the way a guy who dismisses a broken shoulder can be.

"We make money when nobody else can make money, because I live our projects for about six months and then I move on to the next problem," he says. "I'm still young enough that if I like it, I'm going to do it."

Straub spent his youth in Wheeling, W.Va., an industrial town of about 30,000 that sits 60 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. His father died while he was in high school, and he says he dabbled in college briefly before going into business with his brother, selling cars and then construction materials in West Virginia, Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

Although Wheeling sits in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Straub says it reminds him of Atlantic City in a scrappy sort of way, and that's why he feels comfortable there.

"It's about the same size town I come from," he says on the yacht. "I would be wasted in New York City. I'm not comfortable there. I feel like you can know up to fifty thousand people, but you can't know two million."

Straub's got two grown daughters and he says all his present and future investments are for them. (They didn't return requests for comment.) He tried retirement in Florida when he was 40 and it didn't stick. A guy can only play so much golf, he says, and he describes fishing as "a jerk on one end waiting for a jerk on the other end."

In 1993, Straub bought the lavish Palm Beach Polo and Country Club in Wellington, Fla., for $27 million and a new career in distressed properties began. That's also when he fell in love with polo and began breaking bones consistently. He and his wife divorced, he says, because he couldn't stop working, even though it doesn't sound like work to him.

"I'm not in it for money," he says. "This is my hobby."

Straub's other hobbies, besides full-contact polo, he says, include "flying helicopters and s--- like that."

It's a short drive from the Triumphant Lady to the Revel, and Straub gets himself there in a Cadillac Escalade. He parks in the back, just across the street from what's been his biggest headache in Atlantic City, the independently owned power plant that was the sole source of Revel's electricity.

Last month, Straub finally reached a deal with ACR Energy to purchase the plant, and he says it took way too long.

"We've been tied up for six to seven months on energy," he says, looking over at the plant. "We should have had energy on one month after we took over."

The purchase of the power plant means it's time for Straub to put his ideas into action, Atlantic City insiders say.

"In terms of promises made and promises kept, because of the power plant, you have to give Glenn Straub the benefit of the doubt," says local radio host Harry Hurley. "I think a mixed-use Revel, with retail, entertainment and all the other things he's calling for, would be huge for Atlantic City. I'm keeping happy thoughts where Glenn Straub is concerned."

Mayor Don Guardian says he embraces Straub's belief - shared by others - that Atlantic City has to be known as more than a casino town, even more than an entertainment town. Atlantic City, he says, needs to become a city.

"We really need to be more than what we were," the mayor says.

Guardian says Straub's purchase of the power plant, always the Revel's albatross, probably means he could sell the whole package for quadruple what he paid for it, a wise gamble that paid off. Still, he hopes he'll stay and develop the place.

"A vacant building certainly doesn't do us any good right now," he says.

Hurley mentioned Philadelphia developer Bart Blatstein as another newcomer in Atlantic City, someone who also specializes in buying distressed properties. Hurley says Blatstein turned those properties around more quickly.

Blatstein, who built the Piazza in Northern Liberties, reportedly paid $2.5 million for the former Pier Shops at Caesars, a Boardwalk property once appraised at close to $200 million, and quickly transformed it into an entertainment venue called the Playground. Blatstein also is purchasing the Showboat Casino, a few blocks down from Revel, for a reported $22 million. Straub had a deal to buy the closed casino earlier this year, but Blatstein says there's plenty of room in Atlantic City and the bargains still abound.

"He's an engaging guy," Blatstein says of Straub. "I'm anxious to see his plans and how he's going to act on them and what his timeline is."

Straub says he looks up to billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who purchased the Tropicana and the Trump Taj Mahal. Speaking of Trump, an Atlantic City icon for better or worse, Straub says they talk often and he admires the Donald's gift with people.

"He's superior in his ability to connect with people," Straub says. "I've watched him so many times see an employee and say, 'Hey, Mary Sue, how's your aunt? How's your knee?' "

Inside the Revel, Straub also chats up his employees, the skeleton crew that keeps the building's bare-bones pulse going in a room full of feeds from 800 security cameras capturing a whole lot of nothing. He says it costs him roughly $1 million a month just to keep the place closed properly.

Straub grabs a flashlight and heads off into the Revel's bowels, through endless corridors stacked with boxes and random wheelchairs, past warehouses with liquor from floor to ceiling, and all the other amenities an operation that big needs.

"I mean, there's like 1,000 Tampax in boxes," he says. "You wouldn't believe the stuff we have."

Everything on the casino floor looks brand-new in the dim light, but slot machines weren't meant to be off. Up front by the Boardwalk, near the vertigo-inducing escalators, Straub waves his hands around to paint a picture of the water slides he envisions, big ones that might scare the kids.

"You're going to have to be cocky to ride these," he says, slapping the railings.

The Revel goes up higher too, taller than anything else in the city, and Straub jokes that you can see Miami and New York from atop its tower.

"What floor were Madonna and those girls staying on?" he asks, calling back down to the Revel's control room.

Up on Floor 44, Straub wanders in and out of suites the size of his yacht, all with elaborate bathrooms with no real doors and with beds as wide as a boardwalk. They're all empty and cold on this December afternoon, their million-dollar views of Atlantic City and the ocean beyond just waiting for a celebrity or high roller to barely notice them.

Straub insists the Revel will spring to life again, with power, heat, people, profits and possibly polo, and Atlantic City is waiting.

"When they throw the lights on, you'll really see the bells and whistles this place has," Straub says. "We'll get this place cranked up again."

narkj@phillynews.com

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