Stardust casino imploded
Stardust casino is now just a memory. The casino-hotel on the Las Vegas Strip was imploded early Tuesday in a hail of fireworks to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.’s $4.4 billion megaresort Echelon. Hundreds of people partied beneath tents and on makeshift patios before Boyd chairman Bill Boyd’s four grandsons pushed a plunger to detonate the building. The blast generated a massive dust cloud that chased the revelers into cars, buses and nearby casinos. 
The Stardust became as famous for its stellar, 188-foot sign and marquee as its mob connections. The Strip institution was the inspiration for the 1995 movie “Casino,” in which Robert De Niro played a character inspired by Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, who ran the casino-hotel in the mid-1970s. But as regulators cracked down on skimming in later years, Boyd was brought in as an operator in 1983 and bought the Stardust in 1985 when the owners lost their gambling license. In the next two decades, the property’s luster began to fade. “Lido de Paris,” the showgirl extravaganza that starred illusionists Siegfried and Roy for more than a decade, wrapped up in 1991 after a 32-year run. Crooner Wayne Newton brought nostalgia back to the aging clientele in 2000 but called it a wrap in April 2005. And in each of last year’s three quarters before its official closure Nov. 1, the Stardust made less money than the previous year. 
The Echelon is to open in late 2010 with more than 5,000 hotel rooms, a production theater, concert venue, shopping mall and more than 1 million square feet of meeting space.