Sixty years after welcoming it as a flashy trend-setter, Las Vegas is saying goodbye to the Riviera today.
The Riviera closes at noon in advance of its eventual demolition. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which agreed to pay $182.5 million to buy the property in February, will replace the historic hotel-casino with more convention space.
The Riviera saw a lot of glory over the course of its six decades on the Las Vegas Strip. It opened in April 1955 as the Strip’s first high-rise, and Liberace was paid a then-unheard-of $50,000 a week. (That’s $437,000 and change in today’s dollars.)
The hotel has hosted scores of other celebrity performers over the years: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong, Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand and many more. It’s made numerous appearances in popular films, including “Casino,” “Vegas Vacation,” “The Hangover” and the original “Ocean’s 11.”
But the Riviera’s heyday is far behind it now. It no longer enjoys the prominence it once had, overshadowed instead by the swankier mega-resorts that populate the resort corridor. Its north Strip neighborhood is home to a scattering of empty lots, other aging buildings and unfinished projects abandoned during the recession.
The Riviera’s closure is telling, not only for the chapter of history it concludes, but also for the future it foretells. The convention space that will replace it represents one of many ways in which the Las Vegas tourism industry has evolved beyond gambling. And the day after the Riviera shuts its doors, the next big resort project on the Strip — Resorts World Las Vegas — breaks ground across the street.
As those projects get underway, the Riviera will join the many Las Vegas resorts before it that have been imploded to make way for the next big thing.