The famed Tropicana Las Vegas Hotel was demolished in the early hours of Wednesday morning amidst fireworks and fanfare to make room for the newest sports franchise to land in Sin City, the former Oakland Athletics.
End of an Era
The Tropicana Hotel’s roots trace back 67 years, to the golden age of the Rat Pack, when anyone who was anyone would want to be seen and photographed at the Trop. Las Vegas was a mob town back then, and the Tropicana was just one of many under its control. It was once called the “Tiffany’s of the Strip,” and when it swung its doors open in 1957, it boasted the largest casino in Vegas.
However, that was a long time ago, and those larger-than-life figures like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Junior, among others, who were as familiar to the Tropicana as a craps table was to its casino, are all ghosts now, and so too is the hotel. At 2:30 AM on Wednesday, the implosion commenced and lasted all of 22 seconds before the fabled Vegas venue was nothing but rubble.
“The demolition of the Tropicana represents an important milestone in the process of bringing A’s baseball to the world-renowned Las Vegas Strip and the community of Southern Nevada,” said Bally’s Corporation chairman Soo Kim in an earlier press release.
Tropicana Bows Out with a Bang
In true Las Vegas fashion, a fireworks display accompanied by 550 drones celebrated the hotel’s storied past and welcomed a new chapter that will house the city’s first Major League Baseball team. The owners of the Tropicana, Bally’s, put the tribute together and own the rights to develop the 35-acre site, which includes approximately nine acres for the stadium, and the remaining acreage will see a Bally’s hotel and casino on the same parcel of property.
“Bally’s is honored to have been part of this historic moment, bidding farewell to the iconic Tropicana,” Kim added. “As we celebrate its legacy, we look ahead to building a world-class entertainment resort, the future home of the Athletics, and cementing Las Vegas as the ultimate sports and entertainment capital.”
What’s Next for the A’s?
The Oakland Athletics played their last game ever at the Oakland Coliseum on September 29th in what was predictably a loss to the Mariners. The A’s have been one of the league’s worst clubs over the past three seasons, and now they have left the Bay Area for good.
However, the team’s new digs in Las Vegas have a long way to go before it is ready to house an MLB team. The dust hasn’t even settled around the tumbled Trop, which means there will be no Major League Baseball in Sin City when April 2025 rolls around.
However, a temporary site has been found in west Sacramento, Sutter Health Park, home of the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats. The venue seats just a little over 14,000 fans, and the A’s will play the next three seasons there until their permanent home in Las Vegas is ready to welcome them in 2028.
The Las Vegas stadium will seat 30,000 when it is finished, but until then, the Oakland Athletics will simply be known as the A’s or the Athletics, with no home city or state attached to its name for the next three years.
