Rat Pack’s Vegas haunt to be baseball stadium
THERE was a time when everyone who was anyone wanted to be associated with Tropicana Las Vegas.
Built in 1957, making it the city’s third oldest casino, the Tropicana was once a hangout for the likes of Rat Pack stars Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr, and the place for acts such as the topless Folies Bergère show and jazz great Louis Armstrong.
Even James Bond stayed there in the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever, with Sean Connery saying: “I hear that the Hotel Tropicana is quite comfortable.”
Now the building once nick-named “the Tiffany of the Strip” is being pulled down to make way for a Major League baseball stadium.
The casino officially closed its doors at 3am yesterday after regulars, staff members and curious tourists gave it a proper send-off. Many of the old-time dealers wept.
“It was kind of a special time,” Joe Simonetti told the Las Vegas Review-journal, as he walked from the casino’s floor at the end of his final shift.
“We just closed the pit, had some champagne and said goodbye. Now we’re going to go to a bar and have a drink and move on with our lives.”
When it opened in April 1957 with a price tag of $15 million, the Tropicana was considered one of the most luxurious of Las Vegas’s hotels.
It also became integral to the city’s lore, in part of because of its alleged links to Mafia-era figures such as mobster Frank Costello.
It was also the place where magicians Siegfried & Roy, known for their performances with white lions and tiger, made their Vegas debut. In 2003, Roy – whose real name is Uwe Ludwig Horn – was attacked by a seven-year-old white tiger named Mantacore, leaving him with permanent injuries.
Following the demolition, around nine acres of the 35-acre piece of land will be handed to the Oakland Athletics baseball team for the construction of a 30,000-seat stadium.