Posted on: August 15, 2024, 02:13 am.
Last updated on: August 15, 2024, 02:20.
Las Vegas Boulevard was closed briefly Wednesday to allow the former entrance arch to the Mirage to travel down the street it had led to for 34 years, heading for the Neon Museum, 5 miles north.
The museum agreed to accept the bow from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, the owner of the Hard Rock brand, which acquired the operating rights to The Mirage from MGM Resorts for $1.075 billion in 2021.
Also on the way to the museum are the 5.2-meter-high sculpture of Siegfried & Roy with one of their tigers and the 8.2-meter-long Mirage sign that decorated the volcano’s lagoon.
The Seminole Tribe is converting the groundbreaking Steve Wynn property into the second Hard Rock Las Vegas. When it is scheduled to open in 2027, the new casino resort’s standout feature will be a 600-foot-long guitar hotel to be built on the site of the current volcano show – which was actually built on the site of the very first licensed casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
A spot in the museum’s prestigious outdoor Neon Boneyard is reserved for the Mirage Arch, with its thousands of sparkling LED lights and leaping dolphins at each end.
It will be displayed alongside signs for the Stardust, Moulin Rouge, Riviera and other relics that were destroyed by developers who were more concerned with increasing shareholder profits than preserving Las Vegas’s rich cultural history.
Arch forward
The Mirage Arch is not finished with its journey yet, however. It will need to be relocated once the Neon Museum implements its plan to move from its current location to the Arts District, where it will have nearly triple the exhibition space by 2027.
Strangely, even though the Mirage has been closed for a month and parts of it are being removed, the Clark County Business Licensing Office has still not given its final approval to temporarily close the business and gaming operations for three years.
The county is scheduled to review the application on August 20, but this is likely just a formality to ensure that all conditions and requirements of the preliminary permit are met before renovations can begin.
The application also asks the Clark County Business Licensing Department to extend the initial temporary closure by two extensions of six months each.
