Final closing ceremony — with an eruption — appears at Mirage

Executives of The Mirage came full circle with the property Wednesday morning, applauding the work of 3,000 employees, including 137 of them that had been employed there since the first day it opened, and hinting about what lies ahead as it transitions to Hard Rock Las Vegas.

Around 400 people — executives, Mirage team members, community supporters, well-wishers and more — gathered beneath the resort’s porte cochere for one last send-off, just as they did when first opening the doors Nov. 22, 1989.

After the 45-minute ceremony concluded, guests pivoted to face the Strip and witnessed one final eruption of the iconic volcano that has attracted millions of tourists to Las Vegas to visit a resort unlike anything they had ever seen before.

Jim Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International and CEO of Seminole Gaming, the current owners of The Mirage, said the day belonged to the loyal Mirage employees, who received more than $80 million in severance pay, but he hinted about some of the changes in store for the building.

“The number one question I get about this particular facility is what’s happening with the atrium and what’s happening with the villas,” Allen told the crowd.

“But we’re not going to tell you what’s happening with the atrium, but we will tell you that the villas are staying. We know that as part of the legacy of this amazing building. We’ll certainly update the interiors and as we think about the iconic individuals, both celebrities and not, the businessmen, politicians and influencers that have stayed in those legendary buildings, we’ve got to do something that is very important to keep the heritage of this destination.”

Allen said work would begin Thursday on the transition. Hard Rock already has announced one of the biggest changes in store, the construction of a 700-foot guitar-shaped hotel tower where the volcano currently stands.

New rooms, casino coming

The new tower would add 600 rooms to the existing inventory of 3,044 and 48,234 square feet of gaming space to the existing 90,538 square feet.

An update with additional details is expected to be announced by the tribe later this year or early next year.

Elaine Wynn, former wife of Mirage developer Steve Wynn and the property’s co-founder, said The Mirage provided an opportunity to let imagination run wild.

“This is what we do in Las Vegas,” she said. “We reinvest, we refresh, and we keep Las Vegas as one of the most exciting cities in the entire world for that. We don’t let our buildings get too old, we just let the bosses get too old. Although the Golden Nugget was certainly a wonderful experience, Steve and the rest of us all craved and wanted desperately to join the other guys and gals up here on the Strip in order to do something really spectacular and innovative. And it gave us an opportunity, of course, to let the imagination run wild. And his imagination really did run wild.”

Tigers were first guests

Elaine Wynn recalled the arrival of the hotel’s first guests.

“As we stood here, up came the driveway, the beautiful cream-colored Rolls Royce convertible,” she said. “It was Siegfried (Fischbacher of Siegfried & Roy), Zatara, and Neva who were in the back seat. And these, of course, were two of the magnificent white tigers. And Siegfried & Roy escorted them on their blinged-up leashes into the property to be admitted officially as our first guests.”

Alan Feldman, director of strategic initiatives and a distinguished fellow in responsible gaming for the UNLV International Gaming Institute and a Day 1 Mirage employee who served as spokesman for then-owner MGM-Mirage, said early on, Mirage leadership believed they could forever change Las Vegas when the property opened.

“We made a bold prediction that day that if The Mirage was as successful as we believed it would be, it would forever change Las Vegas,” he said. “We even predicted that others might follow this new path with their own audacious ideas. With only a little bit of time, we found out that we were right on both counts.

“As you’ve heard, The Mirage has actually been an entirely different business model, one that integrated all of the aspects that are resorted to in one common strategic vision. We believed that it would create a dynamic whereby the revenues generated from each of the sectors, gambling and non-gambling, could be stronger and more balanced,” he said. “There were many naysayers who didn’t believe in that vision and didn’t believe the investment would pay off. But it did.”

Changing the world

Jan Jones Blackhurst, a member of Caesars Entertainment’s board of directors, executive director of UNLV’s Black Fire Leadership Initiative and, in 1991, the first woman to be elected mayor of Las Vegas. said The Mirage not only changed the city, but changed the world.

“The Mirage changed everything,” she said. “In 1989, Las Vegas was Fremont Street on the north, Tropicana on the south, Decatur on the west, and Eastern on the east. UNLV was one building on their own property. And then The Mirage opened, and the world changed. Because all of a sudden, Las Vegas saw what it could mean. Before then, it’s almost like we were blind. We had our little area on the Las Vegas Strip. We didn’t realize how grown up, how magnificent, how visionary we could be. And Steve and Elaine, they changed all of that. All of a sudden, the doors opened, and everybody walked in and knew who he was, who Las Vegas could be.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.