The now-defunct Tropicana Las Vegas resort and casino has been sentenced to death by implosion on October 9 so the carpetbagging Oakland A’s can try to build a stadium there, and the destruction will come complete with "a drone and fireworks show."
The soon-to-be-no-longer Oakland A’s have just 13 more home games left at the Oakland Coliseum. Their season will then end with no playoffs, and they will head to Sacramento to play there for the next three years, and hope their proposed Las Vegas ballpark gets funded and built by Opening Day 2028. That proposed Las Vegas ballpark is intended to go up where the Tropicana Las Vegas Resort and Casino now stands.
NEW: Tropicana has announced its official implosion date, alongside a celebration featuring fireworks and drones. https://t.co/pjmShTa931
— FOX5 Las Vegas (@FOX5Vegas) August 26, 2024
But it won’t stand there for much longer. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the Tropicana is scheduled to be imploded on October 9, at the curious hour of 2:30 am. Per the Review-Journal, the occasion will be a “celebratory event that will include a drone and fireworks show from Fireworks by Grucci.”
What is this business of “implosions,” you ask? Implosions are how the city of Las Vegas prefers for its old, dinosaur casinos and hotels to be destroyed. The above video shows a very entertaining supercut of these implosions, and yes they do seem fun to watch, the most recent of them being the implosion of the Riviera in 2016.
What if we kissed at the Tropicana Las Vegas Casino Resort liquidation sale pic.twitter.com/Hccntc2s7M
— Krista Diamond (@KristaDiamond) June 2, 2024
The Tropicana already closed permanently on April 2 of this year. And it has long been in disrepair, though in its glory days, was a big Rat Pack casino. When Sammy Davis, Jr. bought an ownership share of the Tropicana in 1972, that made him the first Black person to ever have an ownership share of a Las Vegas Strip casino.
Las Vegas A's, Opening Day 2027 pic.twitter.com/CvdSCbSkQR
— James Pethokoukis ⏩️⤴️ (@JimPethokoukis) April 20, 2023
Las Vegas’ Clark County has still not approved all of the permits for the implosion, though that is expected. The bigger issue for the A’s is the $350 million in Nevada taxpayer funding that they need for the baseball stadium, which is contingent on the A's lining up their own $850 million. They have not yet lined up that $850 million, and the public funding is also facing lawsuits.
Related: Las Vegas Mayor Comes Out Swinging Against the Idea of the A’s Moving to Vegas [SFist]
Image: Kim R. via Yelp
