After closing its doors earlier this month, the Tropicana Las Vegas is now set for demolition following approval from Clark County on April 20. County officials granted the permit, which values the demolition at $15 million.
Bally’s Corp., owners of the 67-year-old resort, filed the application April 11, and now must follow through with the demolition by Oct. 20, per county records. Even though the permit was technically approved, it will not be officially issued until the company pays approximately $48,000 in fees tied to the application.
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Bally’s Chairman Soo Kim has indicated that the company is planning to implode the property sometime in the fall, aiming for September or October, but that timeline is dependent upon the contractor GGG Demolition Inc. securing the required permits.
“There are some preconditions that have to be met that they are working on,” Kim told the newspaper. “If not that, either way it will be done.”
Ohio-based International Content Liquidations has been hired to sell off items from the property’s hotel rooms, food and beverage outlets, conference center and pool area. These sales are currently being done by appointment but a public sale is expected at a later date.
In the weeks leading up to the closure, Bally’s arranged job fairs and other replacement resources for the roughly 700 workers affected by the shutdown.
Company officials previously told the Nevada Gaming Control Board that it would slowly whittle down the number of staff immediately after the closure, and that security, maintenance and engineering personnel would be the last employees still remaining on-site.
Last May, Bally’s announced that it would relinquish the resort to make way for a $1.5 billion, 33,000-seat stadium for the Oakland Athletics (A’s), to be built on nine acres of the 35-acre plot that is owned by the real estate investment trust Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc. (GLPI).
By now, all parties involved have made commitments related to the development—the Tropicana is now closed, the A’s relocation has been approved by Major League Baseball (MLB) and GLPI has pledged to extend $175 million for shared costs and mutually beneficial developments.
Kim confirmed to the Review-Journal that the $15 million in demolition costs would come from those funds.
The state has also contributed to the project, as Nevada lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1 in a special session last June earmarking up to $380 million in public funding, via county bonds and tax credits, to go toward construction costs.
One of the only questions that remains unanswered is how the A’s will scrounge up the remaining funding for the ballpark, approximately $1 billion. Team owner John Fisher, whose parents Donald and Doris Fisher founded The Gap department store chain, has indicated that his family’s estate could potentially provide for some of that funding if other sources are not secured.
Construction on the ballpark is slated to begin in April 2025, and is expected to be completed in time for the 2028 MLB regular season. The team will play in Oakland for the rest of this season and then move to Sacramento from 2025-27.
In early March, the team released updated renderings for the ballpark, which will feature a layered, non-retractable roof structure that closely resembles that of the Sydney Opera House.
The design also calls for an 18,000-square-foot jumbotron, larger than any current MLB stadium.
