Via ABC News: “What would The Mirage be without one last volcano eruption?” asked Joe Lupo, property president of The Mirage, as he ended a closing ceremony that drew hundreds of onlookers, including 137 employees who worked at the 3,044-room resort from the beginning.
Jim Allen, head of the property's new owner, Florida-based Hard Rock International and Seminole Gaming, said work would “literally start tomorrow” to raze the volcano, that rumbled and gushed nightly for nearly 35 years.
Plans call for a 600-room hotel in the shape of a guitar whose renderings depict guitar string-like beams spiking into the night sky from a purplish 660-foot (201-meter) tower.
Bo Bernhard, director of the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, studies the emergence of what he terms the “fun economy” around the world. The Mirage, he said, set a standard for resort development in places like Singapore and Sydney.
“The Mirage changed the image Las Vegas projected to the rest of the world,” Bernhard said. It was “much more than just gambling” and "transformed everything,” he said.
The Seminole Tribe acquired the Hard Rock brand in 2007 from an MGM Resorts International deal worth nearly $1.1 billion. It became the first Native American operator in the lucrative and competitive Las Vegas Boulevard corridor. The tribe also operates seven casinos in Florida and owns the Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos business with locations in 76 countries. It purchased naming rights in 2016 to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
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