Las Vegas Bids Farewell to Tropicana with Iconic Implosion and Firework Show

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Sin City will blow a kiss goodbye to the Tropicana before dawn on Wednesday with an elaborate implosion that will reduce the last true mob building on the Las Vegas Strip to rubble.

The Tropicana’s hotel towers are set to collapse in just 22 seconds at 2:30 a.m., with a celebration that will include a fireworks display and drone show. This will mark the first implosion in nearly a decade for a city that relishes fresh starts and has made casino demolitions as iconic as its gambling.


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“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.

The nature of demolishing casinos in Vegas transformed in 1993, when former casino mogul Steve Wynn orchestrated the implosion of the Dunes to make space for the Bellagio. Wynn didn’t just televise the event; he created a dramatic storyline that made it look like pirate ships at his other casino across the street were attacking the Dunes.

Since then, Schumacher noted, Las Vegas has regarded such grand-scale destruction as a must-see event. The last time a Strip casino was demolished was in 2016, when the final tower of the Riviera was brought down for a convention center expansion.

This upcoming implosion will make way for a $1.5 billion baseball stadium for the relocating Oakland Athletics, part of the city’s ongoing transformation into a sports hub. Consequently, only the Flamingo will remain from the city’s mob era on the Strip. However, Schumacher pointed out that the Flamingo’s original buildings have been entirely replaced in the 1990s.

The Tropicana, the third-oldest casino on the Strip, closed its doors in April after entertaining guests for 67 years. Once dubbed the “Tiffany of the Strip” for its luxurious style, it was a favorite spot for the legendary Rat Pack and has secured its place in Las Vegas lore due to its mob-connected past.

Opening in 1957 with three stories and 300 hotel rooms divided into two wings, the Tropicana evolved alongside Las Vegas over the following decades. The 1990s building boom of megaresorts on the Strip prompted significant renovations at the Tropicana too, including the addition of two hotel towers and the installation of a beloved $1 million green-and-amber stained glass ceiling above the casino floor in 1979.

Despite these changes, the Tropicana’s original low-rise hotel wings have withstood the test of time, maintaining its status as the last true mob structure on the Strip.

Behind its glitzy debut were ties to organized crime, primarily through reputed mobster Frank Costello, who was shot in the head in New York weeks after the Tropicana’s grand opening. Though he survived, the investigation unveiled the mob’s involvement with a piece of paper in his pocket revealing the Tropicana’s exact earnings.

By the 1970s, federal investigations into mobsters in Kansas City revealed a conspiracy to skim $2 million in gambling revenue from Las Vegas casinos, including the Tropicana. This led to over a dozen operatives being charged, with five convictions connected directly to the Tropicana.

The upcoming implosion will be streamed live and broadcasted by local news stations. Although there will be no public viewing areas for the event, fans had the opportunity to say their goodbyes to the vintage Vegas landmark back in April.

“Old Vegas, it’s going,” said a teary-eyed Joe Zappulla from New Jersey as he left the casino just before it closed.