To implode or not implode? The fate of Las Vegas’ Tropicana resort hangs in the balance

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — To implode or not to implode, that is the question addressed at a Wednesday meeting between the owner of the property apparently destined to transform into an MLB baseball stadium on the Las Vegas Strip and the agency in charge of gaming regulation in Nevada.

Hotel implosions are a staple of the Las Vegas Strip, but it’s yet to be determined if The Tropicana will join the famed list of properties that went up in dust. Whether or not the Tropicana Las Vegas Casino Resort will be imploded was the subject of a meeting between the Nevada Gaming Control Board and Bally’s Corporation. The company, which owns and operates the historic 1950s relic, discussed the subject on Wednesday.

“Are we looking at a Las Vegas celebratory send-off demolition?” Kirk Hendrick, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, asked during the Wednesday morning meeting.

A $1.5 billion baseball stadium with 33,000 seats is expected to take the hotel’s place. New renderings of what the stadium might look like were released Tuesday. Many commenting on the reveal on social media said that it bore a heavy resemblance to Australia’s Sydney Opera House, while the news release attached to the renderings said the structure was designed to look like a “spherical armadillo.” The land’s owner, Gaming and Leisure Properties, donated the nine acres of prime real estate along Las Vegas Boulevard in an attempt to bring the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas.

WATCH: Every Las Vegas implosion that happened between 1993 to 2016

Marcus Glover, Bally’s CFO and Executive Vice President, said the means of demolition for Tropicana’s two structures have yet to be determined, indicating that the options are destruction via implosion or brick-by-brick deconstruction.

“A few conversations with our chair — I think he got excited for the possibility of an implosion,” Glover told the gaming control board Wednesday morning.

“An implosion would require significant environmental permitting,” said Dan Reaser, a legal representative for Bally’s Corporation. “It’s not quite the way it was.”

However the structures come down, it’ll be on a timeline. The hotel closes on April 2, 2024. Prices for a stay during the resort’s last hurrah have been steadily rising since the announcement of the closure, with a rate of $479 landing guests the privilege of being one of the last to see the legendary property’s 3,745 square-foot stained glass ceiling in-state. Glover said the land will be handed over to the Athletics organization for stadium construction in April 2025, before an expected 2028 opening day debut.

“It’ll be a clean site, ready for development,” Glover said after the meeting. “There’ll be roughly 60 to 90 days of decommissioning [after the April 2] closure. Upon that time, we’ll engage with our development or construction partner to begin our demolition and abatement plans.”

This means deconstruction will not begin until at least summer 2024. Glover also indicated that newly released renderings of the stadium might adjust somewhat to accommodate the “master redevelopment” planned around it.

“I’m sure there will be iterations to massage and get that right for development to surround that stadium and bring something that works for traffic, that’s also pedestrian friendly and that’s also aesthetically pleasing to that corner,” Glover said to the board.

As for the 700 remaining Tropicana hotel employees, Ameet Patel, Bally’s Senior Vice President and Regional General Manager of the Western Region, said the company is working alongside county commissioners and even the resort’s Las Vegas Strip competition to find them new work. He added that by the time the last Tropicana guest checks out, 600 of the resort’s team members will still be on the clock. More than 25 percent of those team members have worked at Tropicana for at least 20 years, and employees will be offered their jobs back on a seniority basis after development, Patel said.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS.