LAS VEGAS (AP) — A final eruption of The Mirage’s signature volcano marked the end Wednesday for a aging Las Vegas resort that thrilled crowds when it opened in 1989, revolutionizing the casino-resort industry and reshaping Las Vegas as a tourist destination.
“What would The Mirage be without one last volcanic eruption?” asked Joe Lupo, president of The Mirage, as he concluded a closing ceremony that drew hundreds of spectators, including 137 employees who have worked at the 3,044-room resort since its inception.
Jim Allen, head of the property’s new owner, based in Florida Hard Rock International and Seminole Gamingsaid work would “literally start tomorrow” to destroy the volcano, which has rumbled and erupted every night for nearly 35 years.
The plans provide for a 600-room apartment hotel in the shape of a guitar renderings show guitar-string-like beams shooting into the night sky from a 660-foot (201-meter) purple tower. Allen promised more details in the coming months.
Lupo, who remains the complex’s president after the change of ownership, said the new Hard Rock Las Vegas will open in 2027.
Elaine Wynn, a billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of casino magnate Steve Wynn, who built the property, recalled that two performing tigers from resort headliners Siegfried & Roy were the first “guests” to walk through the door in November 1989. She said the first wave of people stopped, stared and applauded under the entrance atrium. It had lush tropical foliage under a domed glass ceiling and a faint piña colada scent in the air.
The past week has seen a frenzy of standing room crowds gambling to win a total of $1.6 million in progressive jackpot winnings from slot machines, which state rules said had to be paid out to clear the books before the doors closed. Slot players lucky enough to get a seat competed for daily prize pools totaling $250,000 a day. Nevada Gaming Control Board spokesman Michael Lawton said Wednesday that he could not legally provide details about how the effort was proceeding.
The $630 million Mirage was no ordinary gambling den. It was the largest hotel in the world when it opened. Visitors were greeted on their way to check in by two bronze mermaid statues, with a giant shark and an aquarium behind them.
It had gleaming shops, celebrity chef restaurants and theater-sized showrooms with headliners like Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton. Illusionist duo Siegfried & Roy and their tigers performed for 14 years, until 2003. It later became home to Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil show “Love”, which ended its 18-year run this month.
“Instead of neon, a garden with dozens of lush Canary Island palm trees and a cool, refreshing waterfall,” Steve Wynn recalled in a remembrance statement released Monday through his Las Vegas attorney, Donald Campbell. Wynn titled it “A Tribute to Lady Mirage.” He did not attend Wednesday’s ceremonies.
In his statement, Wynn noted that The Mirage was the first new hotel in Las Vegas in years and opened amid competition from casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the expansion of tribal gambling in California. He pointed to a decades-long resort building boom that followed, making Las Vegas one of the fastest-growing cities in America.
“To call The Mirage a catalyst would be an understatement,” Wynn wrote.
By 2000, more than 30,000 new hotel rooms had been added as new resorts sprung up on the Las Vegas Strip: Excalibur, Luxor, Treasure Island, MGM Grand, New York-New York, Monte Carlo, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Venetian and Paris Las Vegas. Many were financed by Wall Street bonds. Wynn bought and demolished the 50-year-old Desert Inn to build and open its namesake Wynn Resort in 2005.
Wynn, now 82 and living in Florida, paid a $10 million fine to Nevada gambling regulators last year and severed ties with the industry he helped shape. ending a years-long legal battle following media reports in 2018 that he had sexually harassed or assaulted multiple women in his hotels. He has always denied the allegations.
Bo Bernhard, director of the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, studies the rise of what he calls the “fun economy” around the world. The Mirage, he said, set a standard for resort development in places like Singapore and Sydney.
“The Mirage changed the image that Las Vegas projected to the rest of the world,” Bernhard said. It was “much more than just gambling” and “transformed everything,” he said.
The Seminole Tribe acquired the Hard Rock brand from a MGM Resorts International deal worth nearly $1.1 billion. It was the first Indian operator in the lucrative and competitive Las Vegas Boulevard corridor. The tribe also operates seven casinos in Florida and owns the Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos company, which has properties in 76 countries. In 2016, it purchased naming rights to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
A former Hard Rock Hotel off the Strip in Las Vegas was separately owned. A group including billionaire Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, acquired that hotel-casino in 2018 for about $500 millionIt was renovated and reopened in 2021 as Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
“Las Vegas is always reinventing itself,” said Michael Green, a UNLV history professor whose father played blackjack for decades at casinos including the long-imploded Stardust and Showboat. “The Mirage is no longer state of the art.”