LAS VEGAS (AP) -- The venerable Stardust casino-hotel on the Las Vegas Strip was imploded early Tuesday morning in a hail of fireworks to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.'s $4.4 billion megaresort Echelon.
The property, known for its bargain rooms, friendly service and mobbed-up past, opened on July 2, 1958, billing itself as the world's largest resort hotel with 1,032 rooms.
It is also credited with being Las Vegas' first mass-market casino, thanks to cheap rates and loss-leading food and drinks. The implosion of two towers, gutted to bare concrete and steel over the past three months, included a 32-story building that was the tallest ever felled on the Strip.
In its place, Boyd plans to build a new resort, Echelon, to open in late 2010 with more than 5,000 hotel rooms, a production theater, concert venue, shopping mall and more than 1 million square feet of meeting space.
The property, known for its bargain rooms, friendly service and mobbed-up past, opened on July 2, 1958, billing itself as the world's largest resort hotel with 1,032 rooms.
It is also credited with being Las Vegas' first mass-market casino, thanks to cheap rates and loss-leading food and drinks. The implosion of two towers, gutted to bare concrete and steel over the past three months, included a 32-story building that was the tallest ever felled on the Strip.
In its place, Boyd plans to build a new resort, Echelon, to open in late 2010 with more than 5,000 hotel rooms, a production theater, concert venue, shopping mall and more than 1 million square feet of meeting space.
They say "mobbed-up past" like it was a bad thing. To me, it's part of that old show-biz Sinatra style Las Vegas that has given way to the Steve Wynn Mega resort-pseudo-family-style place that it has become. Minus, of course, the guys on the street hawking time-shares during the day and strip clubs and escort services at night. Somebody should implode them.
Meanwhile, they're moving down the old strip - blasting the past and erecting the future. Wynn's golden tower sits next to the Venetian, and the old Stardust was just a block or two down the road. I took that photo when I was there earlier this year, and noticed the sign out front: TO ALL OUR FRIENDS, THANK YOU FOR 48 WONDERFUL YEARS.
I opened in October of 1957. I was being built when they were building the Stardust.
Whenever I hear about some venerable old structure like a ballpark or historic building being town down, I get a bit melancholy about the state of the world. Things that were once great are now passé, and it is just a matter of time before the new becomes old and is discarded. There are a ton of metaphors I could make, or you could just make your own.
Either way, I suppose it makes me think of myself in terms of my mortality when something that has stood for as long as I, is no longer standing - be it animal, vegetable or mineral.
We are in this disposable society, and when something is of no use or becomes old and obsolete, it is imploded or disposed of to make room for something - anything - new.
It is at once exciting and demoralizing.
If you see me walking around with a sign on my chest, stand back, away from the blast zone.
