EDITORIAL: Au revoir, Riviera
RIP, Riviera. You’ll be remembered fondly, but you won’t be missed.
The 60-year-old hotel closed its doors Monday, just as other historic Strip properties had been shut down before it. A wealth of history doesn’t pay the bills, and the 26 acres underneath the Riviera could be put to a far more productive use: The front door of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s $2.3 billion Global Business District, a project that promises to protect the city’s trade show dominance.
Few places can match the Riviera’s entertainment legacy. Performers from Frank Sinatra to Shecky Greene filled the place, and the hotel served as a setting in movies from “Casino” to “The Hangover.” But that legacy wasn’t enough to drive visitation and pedestrian traffic on a stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that’s finally being rebuilt.
Anything that can be carried out of the hotel will be sold or auctioned, and the 23-story structure — the Strip’s first high rise — will be imploded sometime this summer. The Flamingo and the Tropicana will have one fewer peer in the resort corridor’s senior club.
Where would Las Vegas be if old hotels didn’t make way for new ones? Not anywhere close to the brand it enjoys today. So long, Riv.
