The now-closed Tropicana Las Vegas Resort and Casino was demolished on October 9 so that the success-hungry Oakland A’s could try to build a stadium there. The destruction will be rounded off with a “drone and fireworks show.”
The soon-to-be-defunct Oakland A’s have only 13 home games left at the Oakland Coliseum. Their season will then end without playoffs and they will head to Sacramento to play for the next three years. They hope to have their planned Las Vegas Ballpark funded and built by opening day in 2028. The planned Las Vegas Ballpark would be built where the Tropicana Las Vegas Resort and Casino now stands.
But it won’t be there much longer. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the Tropicana demolition is scheduled for October 9, at the odd hour of 2:30 a.m. According to the Review-Journal, the event will be a “celebratory event that includes a drone and fireworks show by Fireworks by Grucci.”
What’s with the “implosions,” you ask? The city of Las Vegas prefers to have its old, outdated casinos and hotels destroyed by implosions. The video above shows a very entertaining supercut of these implosions, and yes, they do seem to be entertaining to watch. The most recent of these was the implosion of the Riviera in 2016.
The Tropicana already permanently closed on April 2 of this year. And it has long been in a state of disrepair, even though it was a major Rat Pack casino in its heyday. When Sammy Davis Jr. bought a share of the Tropicana in 1972, he became the first black person to ever own a share of a casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
Clark County in Las Vegas has not yet issued all the permits for the demolition, although it is expected to. The bigger problem for the A’s is the $350 million in Nevada state tax money they need for the ballpark. That depends on the A’s raising $850 million themselves. They have not yet raised that $850 million, and the public money is also being litigated.
Related: Mayor of Las Vegas speaks out strongly against A’s move to Vegas (SFist)
Photo: Kim R. via Yelp
