When Was The Riviera Casino Torn Down

The authority’s purchase of the Riviera would follow a well-established Las Vegas tradition of tearing down an old casino, hoping a newer project will have better luck. And, yes, Las Vegans can. Gold Strike is the only remaining casino in Jean after Nevada Landing, which stood across the highway, was torn down in 2008. MGM closed Nevada Landing in 2007 to make way for a master-planned development that failed to materialize in the downturn. One casino worker also met a gruesome end in 2007 when they were killed by a home-made explosive device. The device was set under a plastic cup that had been left turned upside down. The last tower of the famous Riviera Hotel and Casino is reduced to rubble during an overnight building implosion on Tuesday morning on the Las Vegas Strip. The hotel, featured in several.

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Trump Plaza, the home of a former Trump casino and hotel in Atlantic City, will be torn down after the building's owner, billionaire Carl Icahn, submitted plans for demolition to local government officials, NJ.com reported Thursday.

The building, which was constructed and owned by Donald Trump before his presidency, has sat vacant since 2014 but the process to tear down the casino and hotel complex is now underway, although it is unclear what the timeline for the demolition will be.

Mayor Marty Small has been adamant about getting rid of the complex and is working with Icahn Enterprises to raze the buildings. Icahn Enterprises estimated the demolition for June 2021 but said Small wouldn't accept that time table.

'That's smack dab in the middle of our season,' Small said, according to the NJ.com. 'My administration's goal is to get it down by the end of the year, or late February, and time for cleanup for next summer season.'

The building has become a hazard to the area as it disintegrates, with debris strewn across the boardwalk and piece of the facade falling from as high as 34 stories.

© Tom Mihalek/Reuters A security guard walks towards the entrance of the Trump Plaza Casino on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 2012. Tom Mihalek/Reuters

'Vacant buildings are not good for a city, especially high rises,' Fire Chief Scott Evans told CBS Philly. 'We've been responding to this building many times, mostly for debris falling from the building. Debris has fallen from the 34th floor. It's nerve-wracking for us when we get high winds. I cringe.'

Trump sued to have his name removed from the building a month after it shuttered. The complex, which opened in 1984, is one of three casinos Trump built. The other two have since changed names and ownership, according to The Hill.

During its peak, celebrities stayed and performed at Trump Plaza. Jack Nicholson and Kirk Douglas once watched a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Larry Holmes. Vanessa Williams, the Beach Boys, as well as Darryl Hall and John Oates, preformed at Trump Plaza. But by 1992 the hotel and casino filed for bankruptcy.

Hillary Clinton used the landmark as a prop during her campaign for the 2016 presidential election. She said the property was a testament to Trump's failure as a businessman with the sole agenda of getting rich.

Efforts to get rid of the complex have been underway since 2017, a year after Icahn took over the property when he acquired Trump Entertainment Resorts in 2016 from bankruptcy.

'It's an embarrassment, it's a blight on our skyline, and that's the biggest eyesore in town,' Small said in January according to NJ.com.

City officials will hold a meeting next week to decide how to make the process faster.

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LAS VEGAS, Nev. – If the ghosts of Frank Sinatra and Liberace were still hanging around the Riviera Hotel and Casino on Monday morning, they wouldn’t have found a seat at the bar.

Crowds squeezed onto barstools and milled about the casino floor saying goodbye to “The Riv,” a classic that spent 60 years on the Las Vegas Strip and closed at noon.

It’s an age reached by few properties along the four-mile stretch of hulking casino resorts mimicking other worldly landmarks or beckoning passers-by with all their wants in one place that have replaced Sin City’s recent past.

The Riviera’s only remaining elder was the often-renovated Flamingo that Bugsy Siegel debuted in 1947. The Tropicana, which opened in 1957, is close behind.

“The amazing thing about Las Vegas is how soon it forgets itself because it keeps reinventing itself,” said Jeff Kutash, the dancer, choreographer and producer who brought the aquatic stage spectacle “Splash” to a Riviera stage for 21 years.

The 60-year-old casino-hotel’s lustre had faded, becoming the place to go for cheap drinks, cheap blackjack and a free photo-op in front with the ladies of topless revue Crazy Girls, posteriors immortalized with a bronze statue of their behinds.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Long before the buns of bronze were loaded onto the back of a pickup truck’s trailer Monday, the Riviera was among the first casinos to make this stretch of desert glitter. Like the others, mob money made sure the lights were always on at the Riviera.

Its star wattage started with bejeweled piano man Liberace, the property’s first headliner, and its marquee eventually included Frank Sinatra, Engelbert Humperdinck, Tony Orlando and Dolly Parton.

When Was The Riviera Casino Torn Down Album

Rat Pack member Dean Martin was a part-owner for a short time. Another former owner married frequent Riviera performer and Golden Globe winner Pia Zadora.

The long-running stage show “Splash” brought water, fountains and pyrotechnics to a Las Vegas stage starting in 1985, long before Cirque du Soleil did.

Eventually, the Riviera’s casino became the set for “Casino,” the 1995 movie featuring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci and based on real-life Las Vegas mobsters Frank Rosenthal and Anthony Spilotro during their 1970s heyday at the Stardust and others.

It served as Hollywood’s hangout for decades, from the Rat Pack in the original 1960 “Ocean’s 11” to the groomsmen of “The Hangover” in 2009.

After Monday, the property’s history, cinematic or otherwise, is bound for rubble. But it’s not clear when it might be levelled or how, either by demolition or the destination’s favoured pastime: implosion.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority bought the 2,075-room building and 26 acres it sits on in February for $182.5 million plus $8.5 million in related transaction costs.

Furniture and fixtures inside the casino-hotel are expected to be auctioned by NCL, National Content Liquidators, starting May 14 until everything is sold.

The publicly-funded tourism agency plans to tear it down and expand the Las Vegas Convention Center to the Strip. The goal is to bring it down before the end of the year, said Heidi Hayes, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Kutash said he plans to watch when the Riviera turns to rubble. “And I’ll be toasting probably a glass of champagne to a memory that was more of a memory. It was a piece of my DNA,” he said.

He returned to the same stage one more time, a first since the show closed in 2006. “It was just a beautiful but ghostly experience,” he said of being on stage again.

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The property has struggled in recent years as the recession hobbled Las Vegas and development around it went dormant, deterring walk-in traffic. The property hadn’t reported a profit since it emerged from bankruptcy in 2011.

On Monday, though, the Riviera didn’t go quietly into that good afternoon thanks to a casino soundtrack of music, slot machine sounds, clapping as the clock signalled it was noon and cheers from a group of now former cocktail waitresses who worked the graveyard shift together and spent the property’s last seconds sending a few penny slots spinning.

There were no jackpots, but they screamed every time the machine lit up the word “winner.”

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“It was fun. Goodbye Riviera,” said Kelly Hernandez, an 11-year employee at the casino, as she and her family of co-workers walked away from the slot machines toward the exit.