Phil Ruffin graduated from Wichita North in 1953. Many people are familiar with his story. I will skip all the background and tell you how he made out like a "bandit" when most casino's are floundering.
Ruffin bought the Frontier Casino in 1999. For those of you not familiar with The Frontier, it was an old Vegas style casino located on the North strip. Ruffin sold the Frontier to El Ad Properties in 2007 (right before the market crashed). The 1.2 billion price for the 36 acre property was the largest per acre purchase in The Strip's history.
Ruffin than turned around and bought the Treasure Island from MGM/Mirage for a reported 775 million. . (MGM was struggling to raise funds for the completion of its CityCenter project and approached Ruffin about purchasing Treasure Island). Ruffin estimated that it would cost 2.7 billion dollars to build a resort like Treasure Island from the ground-up. Treasure Island is about 700 yards from his old casino. His old casino has been razed and the development of "The Plaza" (The new owners were going to build a replica of the Plaza Hotel in New York) has been indefinitely delayed because of the sour credit markets.
Mr. Ruffin's timing could not have been better. He got "top-dollar" for a property that has since lost a considerable amount of its value in the last three years. He then turned around and bought a property for a 1/3 of what it would cost to build new. Just when you thought things could not get any better for Mr. Ruffin, he married a former Miss Ukraine in 2008. She is 27 and he is 72:> Rob Astle
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