By Gary Dretzka, Photographs: Theodore Marienthal

tephen Crystal was a 20-year-old junior at Dartmouth College when he first made headlines by being elected to occupy a desk in the New Hampshire statehouse—Daniel Webster's, to be exact. Because the ambitious Long Island native was short on cash and still living at Sigma Phi Epsilon—just a short beer can's heave from the original "Animal House"—a corner of the fraternity was retrofitted to serve as an office for Crystal's constituents. He might just as well have invited them to meet at a booth in Hanover's notorious 5 Olde bar.

"While the other guys were drinking beer, I was working in the legislature,"

quips the co-founder, vice-chairman and president of Barrick Gaming Corp., sitting

in a posh conference room on the second floor of the landmark Plaza Hotel and Casino. "But I was too young to appreciate the experience." It was also during this period that Crystal was dubbed "Bugsy," as part of the frat's ritual bestowal of nicknames.

"My name reminded a frat brother of Waterford Crystal, which somehow reminded him of Watership Down, which was a popular book," Crystal recalls, with a broad smile. "There were lots of rabbits in Watership Down, and this led him to flash on bunnies. That translated to Bugs Bunny, which, naturally, was shortened to Bugsy."

In other words, Crystal's a natural. With a nickname like Bugsy, a degree from Dartmouth College, and the responsibility of hosting National Lampoon's Spring Break '05 next month, he couldn't be better suited to revitalize a fading downtown doyenne. In his brief tenure as a legislator, Crystal admits to sponsoring only two bills of any consequence. One freed blind people to bring their Seeing Eye dogs into restaurants, while the other prohibited antihunting forces from banging pots to warn prey of the approach of armed citizens in unfashionably bulky orange vests.

"Many of my constituents were hunters and gun owners, so it was a popular piece of legislation," he explains. Before long, Crystal would drop out of the legislature to help Massachusetts Democrat Michael Dukakis in his unsuccessful run for The White House, against the current incumbent's father. He moved to the nation's capital—where he attended American University's Washington College of Law—but returned to New Hampshire briefly to serve as chief of staff for his friend and mentor, House Minority Leader Mary Chambers.

"Working in a Presidential campaign taught me that I was more interested in making money and supporting politicians than running for office myself," says Crystal. "After law school, on a whim, I moved to Kansas City to work for the mayor and run his campaign. I'd just gotten married, and was starting a law career from scratch, specializing in helping cities put together redevelopment projects with outside interests."

It wasn't long before fate would walk through the doors of Armstrong Teasdale, LLP, in the form of D.W. Barrick. The CEO of Arizona-based Barrick Corp.—which includes banking, mining, ranching and gaming ventures—was in Kansas City scouting locations for his $450 million joint venture with Station Casinos.

"Riverboat gambling was coming to Kansas City," Crystal remembers. "When Dave came strolling into our offices wearing muddy boots and work clothes, my boss didn't like his looks and handed him off to me. He thought Dave was some kind of flake. "He came back to our offices the next day, all cleaned up and with a full staff of people. It was then that he explained his plans for the casino."

In 1992, Crystal became the Barricks' family adviser. Over the next eight years, the two men formed a close personal and professional bond. Today, they are partners in one of the most ambitious—some would argue quixotic—redevelopment projects in Las Vegas history. The future of downtown depends on their success.

"Dave's an innovator, an old-school entrepreneur: We're opposites in almost every way," Crystal allows. "It was an unlikely pairing from the start, but he was willing to become a mentor to me, just as Mary Chambers was in New Hampshire. The most important things I learned from him were to take risks and be willing to learn from my failures."

Soon after Barrick sold his interests in Kansas City, and Crystal moved his family back to Washington, the gambling bug caught hold once again. Barrick convinced Crystal to come west with him, to Las Vegas. Together, they formed Barrick Gaming, which in 2002 confounded skeptics by buying up a sizable chunk of downtown for the bargain-basement price of $82 million...

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