Ocean liner-themed casino proposed

Friday, March 12, 1999 | 11:22 a.m.

An application was filed Tuesday with the Las Vegas Planning Department for an ocean liner-themed hotel-casino to be located on the site of Bob Stupak's Thunderbird hotel.

The project, at 516 Park Paseo, would replace Stupak-owned hotels at 1213 S. Las Vegas Blvd.

According to the plans, the 1,000-room hotel-casino, called "The Boat," would include 30,000 square feet of restaurant and lounge space, 5,000 square feet of conference rooms and 18,000 square feet of retail space.

The rooms are called "cabins" on the plans, which shows the hotel-casino as a large ship with four smokestacks running southeast from the corner of Park Paseo and Las Vegas Boulevard.

"This boat is going to be the actual size of the actual Titanic," said planning department spokeswoman Sonia Douglas.

Next to the ship-shaped hotel-casino, plans show a structure called the "Iceberg Commercial Area."

The overall project would be just under 700,000 square feet, and would cost more than $300 million, officials said. The casino's size was not shown.

Stupak's involvement with the project is unclear. The plans were filed by Don Stoecklein on behalf of MRA Corp. A spokeswoman for Stoecklein said confidentiality agreements prohibit him from commenting.

Stupak, who has long been rumored to be planning a hotel-casino based on the sunken ocean liner Titanic theme, could not be reached for comment. Stupak owns a hotel called the Titanic Resort located behind the Thunderbird. Stupak is best known as the original developer of the Stratosphere resort.