Las Vegas Strip: Implosion brings down Tropicana casino to make way for baseball stadium

 It was the first implosion in nearly a decade for a city that loves fresh starts and that has made casino implosions as much a part of its identity as gambling itself.

“What Las Vegas has done, in classic Las Vegas style, they’ve turned many of these implosions into spectacles,” said Geoff Schumacher, historian and vice president of exhibits and programs at the Mob Museum.

Former casino mogul Steve Wynn changed the way Las Vegas operates casinos in 1993 with the implosion of the Dunes to make way for the Bellagio. Wynn thought not only to televise the event, but also created a fantastical storyline for the implosion that made it look like pirate ships at his other casino across the street were firing on the Dunes.

From then on, Schumacher said, there was a sense in Las Vegas that destruction of that magnitude was worth witnessing. The city has not blown up a casino on the Strip since 2016, when the last Riviera tower was demolished for a convention center expansion.

This time, the implosion cleared land for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium for the relocation of the Oakland Athletics, part of changes in the city seeking to become a sports hub.

That will leave only the city’s mob-era Flamingo on the Strip. But, Schumacher said, the Flamingo’s original structures are long gone. The casino was completely rebuilt in the 1990s.

The Tropicana, the Strip’s third-oldest casino, closed in April after hosting guests for 67 years. Once known as the “Tiffany of the Strip” for its opulence, it was a frequent haunt of the legendary Rat Pack, while its mob past has long cemented its place in Las Vegas lore. It opened in 1957 with three floors and 300 rooms split into two wings.

As Las Vegas rapidly evolved in the following decades, including a megaresort construction boom on the Strip in the 1990s, the Tropicana also underwent major changes. Two hotel towers were added in later years. In 1979, the beloved $1 million green and amber stained glass ceiling was installed over the casino floor.

The Tropicana's original hotel wings survived numerous renovations, making it the last true mob-era structure in the city. The Tropicana had ties to organized crime, largely through reputed mobster Frank Costello.

Costello was shot in the head in New York weeks after the Tropicana opened. He survived, but the investigation led police to a piece of paper in his coat pocket with the Tropicana's exact profit figure, revealing the mob's involvement in the casino.

In the 1970s, federal authorities investigating mobsters in Kansas City charged more than a dozen officers with conspiring to steal $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. The Tropicana-related charges resulted in five convictions.

The implosion was not visible in public areas, but Tropicana fans got a chance to say goodbye to the Las Vegas relic in April. “Old Las Vegas, it’s going away,” Joe Zappulla, a teary-eyed New Jersey resident, said at the time as he left the casino.