When Wynn was planning his Le Reve resort, he called Trump for some words of wisdom on branding.

Trump said something to the effect of, "Steve, you are the king of Las Vegas casino development. You've put up the best product in Nevada." Or so recalls Jack Wishna, a minority investor in the Trump International Hotel and Tower under way beside the New Frontier.

Trump recently mentioned the conversation again to Wynn, who attended a groundbreaking event for the tower last week.

It wasn't long after that conversation that Wynn announced he would be changing the name of his resort to Wynn Las Vegas.

Trump, a brand in himself, is way ahead of Wynn in the branding department.

Before some of the contestants on his hit reality show "The Apprentice" were even in diapers, Trump was at work crafting a brand synonymous with wealth, power and pricey real estate.

Trump's father had already established his name as a real estate developer in the boroughs of New York City. But it was the younger Trump who took on Manhattan, buying and selling at least a dozen high-rise buildings over the past three decades. He also took self-promotion to new heights, often referring to himself as "the biggest developer in New York" along the way.

While he still refers to himself that way, the fantasy has become reality. And Trump's real estate empire is expanding.

While some Wall Street analysts will still cringe at the prospect of buying bonds in Trump casinos (high interest payments have forced Trump's casino company into bankruptcy twice), others are clamoring to get a piece of what Trump does best.

Trump, who quit his CEO job as part of the post-bankruptcy reorganization of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts and remains on the board of the new Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., is busy developing high-rise condominiums.

Trump and his privately held real estate empire can only expand by so much.

That's why in recent years Trump has begun to license his name to condo towers he didn't develop from scratch.

One such project, the $700 million Trump Grande Ocean Resort and Residences near Miami, marked Trump's first foray into South Florida and his first partnership with regional developers Michael and Gil Dezer.

The complex, located on Sunny Isles Beach, consists of a 372-unit condo-hotel called Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort that opened in 2003 and two nearby condo towers that were spawned by the initial success of the condo-hotel.

The first is a 278-unit condo tower called Trump Palace, and the second is Trump Royale, a 391-unit condo tower scheduled to be complete by 2007. As of last year, units in Trump Royale were priced from half a million to $25 million for some penthouse suites.

The Dezers' condo-hotel was a bit of a gamble before Trump came along and boosted the project's price potential by some 30 percent or more, said Wishna, who is familiar with but not involved in Trump's licensing deals.

"He was able to take something that was maybe gold and turn it into platinum," Wishna said.

Trump has also entered licensing partnerships with towers in Toronto, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale and White Plains, N.Y., that are completed or in various stages of development.

Developers have approached Trump for various reasons, either because they were having problems generating business as projected or because they wanted to increase their pricing over and above the competition, Wishna said.

These deals involve more than simply hoisting the Trump name on the side of the building. Trump makes executive decisions about design features large and small and installs a sales and marketing staff to sell the units, Wishna said.

"Through all of the smoke and mirrors of promotion, you're actually getting a quality building that is second to none," said Wishna, who lives part of the year in one of Trump's Manhattan buildings, called Trump Parc. "He won't just put his name on a building and walk away."

In the revolving-door world of luxury real estate, not one group of condo owners has ever ousted Trump from the job of managing any of the buildings he owns in Manhattan.

"That's unheard of," Wishna said.

With his latest foray into licensing, Trump makes money off the extra profit generated over and above the buildings' pre-Trump prices. He also gets to expand into second-tier markets he might not have otherwise explored.

Developers feed off Trump's ever-growing fame. And customers end up getting what they believe to be a piece of the gold-plated, white-carpeted, jet-setting Trump lifestyle.

As long as there are plenty of like-minded customers to go around, Trump will continue to embark on licensing deals that are still foreign to casino moguls, not to mention just about every other executive of a major U.S. corporation.

Wynn Resorts' gift shop sells an eye-popping array of Wynn merchandise, from Wynn clothing to chocolate bars. But whether Wynn will end up selling his own cologne, as Trump has done, remains to be seen. It's also doubtful that any other executive besides Trump would go so far as to license a line of business suits and then wear them to his own meetings.

Liz Benston is a gaming writer for the Sun and its sister newspaper, In Business Las Vegas. She can be reached at (702) 259-4077 or by e-mail at benston@lasvegassun.com.