For Las Vegas, a New Kind of High Roller

“Want us to power up the Big Shot for you?”

In the hot hazy afternoon sun, you’re already standing 921 feet above the ground on a deck of concrete. Your eye travels up the length of the Big Shot--the white steel cylindrical shaft of the thrill ride that launches you 160 feet higher in 2.3 seconds, then sends you hurtling back down faster than gravity. For good measure it bounces you lazily up and down a couple of times like you’re on the end of a Bungee cord. And now one of the ride’s engineers is offering you a chance to feel what the public can’t taste until Tuesday.

“No thanks.”

But the engineers who built this attraction--outrageous even by Vegas standards--won’t take no for an answer. (“Oh, come on, reporters are supposed to have confidence,” taunts engineer Mickey Carpenter.) This, after all, is the jewel in Las Vegas’ newest--and highest--commercial monstrosity.

Soon, they’re strapping you into the adult equivalent of a baby seat with a bright red padded harness. Your slip-on shoes have been taken away lest they fly off your feet out over Las Vegas. Now, you’re one with the concrete needlelike tower that has been rising in the Las Vegas desert over the last four years, attracting controversy and curious gawkers.

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

In an instant, you’re catapulting up into the air, screaming, then you’re falling, lifting slightly off the bottom of your chair--the much-touted free-fall effect--clutching the harness instinctively. As the ride bounces you up and down slowly, you manage to open your eyes for the first time to glance out at mountains and sky and buildings below. Now you’re giggling. The whole thing takes 25 seconds. It feels like five.

Just when you thought there were no new gimmicks to be had here, behold the Stratosphere: a $550-million hotel, casino and shopping complex that features a concrete tower that is the fifth-tallest structure in the United States. It’s also the tallest free-standing observation tower in the country, its promoters like to say.

At 1,149 feet, the Stratosphere tower has dominated the skyline of Las Vegas for several years, forced McCarran International Airport to make modifications to takeoffs from its north runway, and given two Vegas promoters--one an old-time, lone-wolf entrepreneur, the other an ambitious newly arrived corporation--a chance to gamble on gamblers emptying their pockets in a casino on their way to the tower.

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“There isn’t a tower in the world that hasn’t been extremely successful,” said Tom Bruny, director of communications for Stratosphere Corp., “whether it’s the Space Needle in Seattle or the Eiffel Tower in Paris.”

The real moneymakers for the Stratosphere Corp., which runs the complex, are, of course, the hotel and casino and shops, located on the ground at the downtown end of the Vegas Strip. The tower rises above it. With a concrete spine that resembles two arcs standing back to back, it looks a bit like the Space Needle. It rises for 771 feet before it comes to a 12-story pod that features indoor and outdoor observation decks, three wedding chapels, and a restaurant with a breathtaking view through glass walls that jut out and give the feeling that you’re standing on the edge of a ledge.

The Big Shot sits atop the pod. At the top of that sits a narrow shaft of steel pointing skyward.

In addition to the Big Shot thrill ride, there is a roller coaster, the High Roller, with 385 feet of track wrapped three times around the tower at an altitude of 909 feet. (In December, the company expects to open an animatronic “gorilla” ride that will climb the tower.) The rides will cost $5. Getting into the high-speed elevator that takes you up the tower costs another $7.

As with everything connected to the Stratosphere, the height of the tower is the thing. There are other rides like the Big Shot--but none that drop you from over 1,000 feet in the air. There are roller coasters that have more dips and go faster than the High Roller’s maximum 35 mph limit, but none situated as high in the sky.

“The thrill is feeling like you’re out over the edge of the tower,” Bruny said.

That’s one reason why Bob Stupak, the Las Vegas hotel owner and onetime mayoral candidate who conceived the tower and rides six years ago, is so disappointed that the tower wasn’t approved at its proposed 1,800 feet.

“I don’t want to be the guy who built a tall tower in Las Vegas,” said Stupak, 54, a legendary Vegas character and avid high-stakes poker player who owned the gaudy Vegas World that was gutted to make way for the Stratosphere. “I want to be the guy who built the tallest structure in the world.” Stupak now owns 16% of the complex.

Stupak figured that among Vegas Strip attractions, ranging from pirates fighting on ships to white tigers snoozing behind glass in a hotel, the distinction of being the planet’s tallest building would surely win his tower a must-see place on the tourist’s agenda. Even now, he’s still betting the tower will dominate Vegas postcards.

Stupak is lucky to see any of the tower.

He barely survived a motorcycle accident a year ago that has left him with pins in his leg and 14 implants in his jaw. His teeth are gone, so he puts in his “show biz teeth” for photos. Now he’s busily sending out gold-plated, diamond-chip-studded special invitations to the opening festivities.

The tower itself has risen from a rocky road. It was initially referred to as the “eighth blunder of the world” and “the Stupak shaft.” (“That one, I liked,” Stupak said.) The Federal Aviation Administration protested its original height, and the city approved the project at 1,149 feet. A spectacular 1993 fire in the wooden scaffolding of the fledgling tower eroded investor confidence in the project and temporarily sidetracked a public stock offering.

By the time the fire hit, Stupak had invested $20 million of his own money. After the fire, he and Lyle Berman, chief executive officer of the Minnesota-based Grand Casinos Inc.--they had met playing poker--hatched a plan to be partners in the project. Grand Casinos, which has a 44% interest in Stratosphere Corp., has casinos in other states, but this is its first foray into Nevada.

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On the eve of the Stratosphere’s opening, the place is an odd mixture of glitz and dust. The edges of gaming tables gleam black lacquer while the carpet is still covered with black plastic and tools. As of Thursday, hundreds of workers were still drilling, welding, and painting. Souvenir stands full of T-shirts were still under construction. At the top of the pod, ride engineers did final testing of controls and tracks, running the roller coaster weighted with bags of salt (“simulated people” quipped one engineer.) Other engineers literally walked the coaster tracks, carefully scrutinizing them. Though the tracks are actually about three stories above a concrete landing, from the side, the workers gave the unnerving appearance of walking on narrow tracks 900 feet above ground.

So how safe is this amusement park in the sky?

Ride engineer Carpenter points to the wheel structure on one of the coaster cars.

“You have wheels on top, wheels on the side, wheels on the bottom,” Carpenter said. “It’s not going anywhere.”

Airport officials say anything over 800 feet is a hazard as far as they are concerned. “Certainly it’s not the most optimal situation, but certainly it is a safe situation,” said Jacob Snow, assistant director of aviation for planning and environment at McCarran. Still, the airport and the county have now instituted an airport hazard board to give them greater control the next time someone wants to propose some monstrosity in the air.

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Of greater concern is figuring out fire and evacuation procedures for the tower, which can hold 2,000 people. Paul Wilkins, director of the city’s building inspection department, who has signed a temporary certificate of occupancy for the Stratosphere, says the company has had outside design and fire protection consultants involved in the construction since the beginning.

According to Stratosphere officials and Wilkins, the tower has just about every fire protection device a high-rise could have. According to Azarang Mirkhah, fire protection engineer with the city of Las Vegas, there are two water pumps at the base of the tower, another two water pumps on the 11th floor of the pod of the tower and four water tanks on the 12th floor--the highest level--of the pod. “If the pumps on the bottom fail, you’ve got 30,000 gallons of water on top to fight the fire,” Mirkhah said.

Stairwells are pressurized, giant vacuum-like devices are in place to suck smoke out of affected areas, and the first two levels of the pod, designated as an “area of refuge,” are vast empty concrete areas that will hold occupants of the pod.

Though there are stairwells, the tower will rely on its high-speed elevators to ferry people out of the pod if necessary. Firefighters will take elevators up the concrete shaft to the first level of the pod. Mirkhah says firefighters will not face the usual dangers of taking elevators in a high-rise with a fire, because essentially firefighters would only travel the elevator in the noncombustible concrete shaft of the tower to arrive at the first level of the pod, the concrete area of refuge. From there, they treat the rest of the pod as they would a typical high-rise, only taking elevators to floors where they knew fire was controlled or out.

Firefighters will use three command centers on the site of the complex to assess the extent of fire through panels that display fire and smoke alarms.

Las Vegas officials seem content. When inspection director Wilkins signed off on the Stratosphere, he said, “I had more confidence in this building that a lot of them.”