Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024 | 7:38 a.m.
Before more than 2,000 pounds of explosives turned the Tropicana to rubble Wednesday morning, the resort’s team made sure to save some of its now-historical artifacts.
Most either went to the Neon Museum or the UNLV archives.
However, some pieces, like the casino’s iconic Tiffany-style stained-glass ceiling, have been tucked away for safekeeping.
A new baseball stadium to house the Athletics is planned on the property and targeted to open in 2028.
“We’re going to look for an opportunity down the road to have some incorporation, some moment, in the (new stadium)” Tropicana General Manager Arik Knowles said of those saved pieces. “We don’t know exactly what we’re going to do, but we wanted to hold on to some of these precious memories.”
What they left behind, the skeletons of the Paradise and Club Towers, fell at 2:36 a.m. A minute later, all that remained was a dust cloud and the fading smell of fireworks that heralded the implosion of the Tropicana, an iconic casino that had graced the Strip’s landscape since 1957.
“I’m just going to breathe all of this in before they implode the Trop, and then I breathe all of that in,” A’s Owner John Fisher said at a private viewing. “This has been a long time coming. We really started working on our stadium effort 18 years ago.”
The event’s attendees had to stay an extra 30 minutes after the show concluded to wait for the dust to dissipate.
Clark County issued an air advisory for “Trop Dust” in effect beginning immediately after the implosion. Even once roads started to open, the air was still thick nearby.
Two hours earlier, Phil Grucci, president of the fireworks company working on the multimedia performance that lit the sky over the Tropicana just the implosion, admitted he had the typical “pre-show jitters.”
“It’s a good energy,” said Grucci, whose company has now performed at nine implosions overseen by Controlled Demolitions Inc. “It’s a good energy to be on your edge, be on your toes. The clock … counts down very slowly.”
Along with the booming fireworks, Grucci’s company used drones to form images that included a baseball hurling through the sky and projected a “Las Vegas A’s” logo with added dice on the side of the Club Tower. The performance took the coordination of nearly 100 people working on lighting, audio, fireworks and drones, Grucci said.
The show also paid homage to the Tropicana’s history, using moer than 500 drones to create the resort’s old logo.
While the Tropicana didn’t invent the Las Vegas showgirl, it was the second hotel on the Strip to have the now-iconic performers on its stage, according to Nevada Magazine. The hotel’s show, “Folies Bergère,” ran for almost 50 years.
Ending the night, the drones highlighted the A’s and Bally’s, which owns the land.
“Bally’s is honored to have been part of this historic moment, bidding farewell to the iconic Tropicana,” Bally’s Chairman Soo Kim said in a news release. “As we celebrate its legacy, we look ahead to building a world-class entertainment resort, the future home of the Athletics, and reinforcing Las Vegas as the ultimate sports and entertainment capital.”
In Las Vegas, implosions like the Tropicana’s get extra attention with extensive media coverage beforehand. After the implosion was announced, rooms in the neighboring MGM Grand were quickly booked for viewing.
Knowles credits the enthusiasm for the event to its rarity and the “fascinating” science behind knocking down a building.
The implosion of the two 22-story towers — totaling 917,400 square-feet — needed 22,000 lineal feet of detonating cord, officials said. Taking down the steel-framed Paradise Tower required 220 cut-point locations loaded with 490 pounds of explosives, while concrete-framed Club Tower had 1,130 boreholes filled with 1,700 pounds of explosives.
“Taking down an apartment building, not that exciting, right?” Knowles said. “Taking down something that has as much heart and soul, (and) memories, as Tropicana holds for a lot of people? I think that’s why it’s important.”