Not everything stays in Vegas
Fireworks go off seconds before the implosion of the Stardust hotel-casino in Las Vegas on Tuesday, March 13, 2007. It was imploded to pave the way for Boyd Gaming Corp.’s $4.4 billion mega resort complex, Echelon Place. If it isn’t steel or concrete, it’s being removed from the shuttered Stardust hotel tower. In preparation for the planned mid-March implosion of the 32-story building, construction crews have been busy the past few months removing everything from inside the tower that wasn’t already auctioned off.
“The idea is to minimize as much of the debris from the implosion as possible,” Boyd Gaming spokesman Rob Stillwell said. “We’re doing what we can to recycle as much of the material as possible. The result is that all that will be left is the steel and concrete.” Stillwell couldn’t give an exact cost for removing the Stardust from the Strip skyline, but he said it was “in the millions.”
The classic Las Vegas hotel which first opened during the “Atomic Age” on July 2, 1958, closed its doors for good in November 2006. The Stardust site, now 63 acres, is expected to grow by 24 acres once a swap of the Barbary Coast to Harrah’s Entertainment in exchange for some adjacent land close.
Photos by Jae C. Hong/AP Photo
Category: Architecture, Urban Design