A Candymaker Went Mad

By NANCY GIBBS

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.

With reporting by Sue Raffety/Atlantic City