In the public arena.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Steve Stroud's ambitious plans hike the cost of his entertainment and sport arena in Raleigh, Carolina - Cover Story

Steve Stroud believes in his dream. Building it has been a nightmare.

Steve Stroud stands behind the podium in the Raleigh Convention & Conference Center, his thick torso wrapped in a tan Western-cut suit, the trousers breaking at his black gatorskin boots. A black leather bolo tie dangles down his starched white shirt. Vernon Malone, chairman of the Wake County commissioners ... Nick Tennyson, mayor of Durham ... North Carolina Rep. David Miner ... Where's David? I saw him outside. Stand up, David.

In a light country twang he got growing up in rural Rutherford County, Stroud acknowledges each of the two dozen or so city and county officials from around the Triangle who have come to his company's annual real-estate conference. His meaty hand sweeps across the heads of the crowd, pointing out the pols and, with a flick of his fingers, directing them to rise.

The 1,200 bankers, brokers, lawyers and assorted hangers-on couldn't care less whether Wendell's city manager is among them. They're here to swap business cards and Lewinsky jokes while nibbling ham biscuits beside a 4-foot-high ice sculpture of the logo of Stroud's Carolantic Realty Inc. But Stroud is making a point. He may be taking blows in the press for cost overruns and delays in the construction of Raleigh's 19,722-seat entertainment and sports arena, which he's overseeing. But he's still the man who runs the Triangle's No. 1 schmooze fest. And local politicians from both parties come to hear his company's predictions about real estate.

For Stroud, 55, the arena was supposed to crown a career that took him from a childhood in which he was reared in a cabin without plumbing to being the Triangle's top commercial real-estate broker and developer. This was his chance to say to the politicians, "Step aside, boys, and let a businessman show you how it's done." It hasn't worked that way. The opening has been pushed back to September, five months behind the original target. Its cost has more than doubled, from an early estimate of $66 million to $154 million. On March 9, contractors warned it would take even more time and money than that. Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer, a politician Stroud's money helped create, has turned acid critic: "Putting a building of this size in the hands of a bunch of appointed, part-time folks was a prescription for disaster."

Truth is, Stroud brought this on himself. He never intended to build a $66 million arena, one suitable for N.C. State basketball but little more. He wanted something grander - a structure that would declare the Triangle's arrival, one that could land pro hockey and eventually NBA basketball. At the first meeting in 1995 of the Centennial Authority, the state-chartered arena-oversight group he chairs, he called for a redesign, with an eye to adding luxury suites. Then came upgrades to land an NHL team and some miscalculations that raised the price.

Stroud insists economics, not ego, motivated the revisions. "What was originally proposed was a very nice college-basketball gym, but it wasn't a multipurpose sports and entertainment facility, which is what the General Assembly charged us with building. It didn't have the rigging ability to put on a Garth Brooks concert. It couldn't accommodate pro sports. To make money, these things need amenities."

He's convinced, in the end, he'll be proven right. As he likes to say, "Vision is expensive, but lack of vision is even more expensive."

Stroud guns his white GMC Suburban to catch a yellow light, heading out U.S. 64 to Knightdale, where he lives with his wife, Grace Ramsey, and their kids, Eric, 15, and Andrea, 14. (He's been married three times and has two daughters from a former marriage.) He's chiding his passenger, improvising a riff off his favorite refrain: I'm not who you think I am.

"I bet you thought I lived in north Raleigh," the sprawling, new suburbs. "What do you think my house is like?"

Big.

"Big? You mean opulent? I think you're gonna be surprised."

The house is tucked in the former tobacco town, 15 minutes east of downtown Raleigh. Hidden from the road, it's roomy but no mansion - a ranch Stroud and Ramsey have...