Legendary casino before demolition
Baseball team makes Las Vegas landmarks disappear
February 1, 2024, 7:13 p.m
In the USA everything is always moving. This is also the case at the venue for this year’s NFL Super Bowl. A Las Vegas landmark will soon be just a memory. A baseball team is to have a new home where the Tropicana has stood for more than 60 years. Everything will be over in two months.
When the Tropicana Las Vegas casino hotel opened in 1957, Nevada’s lieutenant governor symbolically unlocked the door to the new building. Then he threw away the key – “to signal that the Tropicana will always remain open,” as historian Michael Green tells it. In fact, the resort became a landmark of “Sin City”, the “City of Sin”, as the gaming oasis is nicknamed.
But now, more than six decades later, the Las Vegas Strip resort that once had ties to the Mafia will close its doors forever. It has to make room for a 1.5 billion dollar (1.4 billion euro) major league baseball stadium, which will then be the home of the Oakland Athletics – or Oakland A’s for short – who are moving to Las Vegas. Tropicana’s owner, Bally’s Corp, said this week that preparations for demolition will begin with the closure on April 2 – a few days before the 67th anniversary of its opening.
The baseball facility with all the trimmings is a “once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Bally’s President George Papanier. A company press release said: “Bally’s looks forward to developing a new resort and stadium that will be a new landmark, honoring the iconic history and global appeal of Las Vegas and its nearly 60 million annual visitors.”
Shots are fired in the Sin City swamp
Siegfried & Roy also took their first steps in the Tropicana.
(Photo: picture-alliance/dpa)
The population of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, had just passed 100,000 when the casino hotel opened on a Las Vegas Strip that was not then home to the mega-resorts it is known for today. The Flamingo had been around for a decade, and the Stardust debuted the following year, costing $8.5 million, Green says. Known for its opulence, according to the historian, the Tropicana featured mosaic tiles and mahogany paneling on the walls throughout. A tulip-shaped fountain rose near the entrance, and every hotel room had a balcony.
There were ties to the Mafia behind the scenes, largely through Frank Costello, who was known as a gangster, according to Green, who is also a board member of the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Weeks after the Tropicana opening, Costello was shot in the head in New York. He survived, but the police found a piece of paper in his jacket pocket with details of the casino hotel’s income. According to information on the Mafia Museum’s website, the note also mentioned money that was supposed to be illegally “skimmed” for Costello’s partner.
In the 1970s, an investigation into mobsters in Kansas City indicted more than a dozen Mafia associates in an alleged plot to skim nearly $2 million in gaming revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. Charges related to this casino hotel alone resulted in five convictions.
The rise of Siegfried & Roy
Casino with entertainment guarantee since 1957.
(Photo: AP)
But the famous establishment also enjoyed many years of Mafia-free success, as Green puts it, and was expanded in later years. Two hotel towers were added. In 1959, Tropicana’s long-running topless show “Folies Bergère” premiered, which was also featured in the 1964 Elvis Presley film “Viva Las Vegas” (“Great Nights in Las Vegas”). The German duo Siegfried & Roy, magicians and tamers, achieved their breakthrough in the USA at the Tropicana. Top stars such as Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong and Gladys Knight have performed there, and in 1998 stuntman Robbie Knievel attempted a record jump on a motorcycle in front of the facility, sending him flying 70 meters above a row of limousines.
A lot has changed around the resort over the years. The Tropicana now stands at an intersection with a major thoroughfare named after it. Megaresorts rise in the area, the MGM Grand, Excalibur, New York-New York, Luxor and Mandalay Bay.
From 2028 only baseball
Bally’s said hotel bookings will no longer be accepted after April 2 and guests with existing reservations beyond the closure date will be rescheduled. So at least there is good news for the guests at this year’s NFL Super Bowl. It will be played on February 11th between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.
The planned baseball project is supported with $380 million in public money. All 30 team owners in the Major Baseball League agreed to move the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas in November. The ballpark is expected to open in 2028.
Many of the Tropicana employees affected by the closure have worked there for decades, according to Ted Pappageorge, treasurer of the Culinary Workers Union. That union, which represents about 500 of the casino hotel’s employees, and the Tropicana have reached an agreement under which the workers will receive $2,000 in severance pay for each year of employment at the hotel.
“In Las Vegas, hotels are bought and sold on a regular basis,” says Pappageorge. “These new projects are welcome, but employees cannot be thrown away like an old shoe.” Bally’s acquired the Tropicana in 2021 for $308 million.