CBS News
Famed Mirage in Vegas, in last day, slated to rise again in 2027 as Hard Rock Las Vegas
Las Vegas — The Mirage is about to vanish from the Las Vegas Strip.
Gambling ends and the doors close Wednesday at the iconic tropical island-themed hotel-casino that opened in 1989 with a fire-spewing volcano outside and Siegfried & Roy’s lions and dolphins inside.
Frenzied final days have seen standing-room crowds wagering to win $1.6 million in slot machine progressive jackpot winnings that state regulations say have to be disbursed before the lights go out and a massive transformation of the property begins.
John Locher / AP
Guest rooms are already empty. The Beatles-themed Cirque du Soleil show “Love” ended its 18-year run earlier this month. When gamblers are gone, only memories will remain of former casino mogul Steve Wynn’s hotel that revolutionized the casino resort industry.
“Las Vegas always reinvents itself,” said Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor whose father dealt blackjack for decades at casinos, including the long-ago-imploded Stardust and Showboat. “The Mirage is no longer state-of-the-art.”
New operators Hard Rock International and Florida-based Seminole Gaming plan to add 600 rooms to an existing 3,044 in a bright new guitar-shaped hotel where the sidewalk-side volcano rumbled and gushed nightly. Renderings depict guitar string-like beams spiking into the night sky from a purplish 660-foot tower.
“The Mirage was a transcendent property, changing the landscape of Las Vegas,” said Joe Lupo, president of The Mirage who will stay on at the new resort. “We are confident that Hard Rock Las Vegas will do the same in 2027.”
There won’t be a demolition spectacle like the now-shuttered Tropicana casino-hotel several blocks down the Strip. That 22-story property is slated to be dynamited sometime later this year and replaced before 2028 by a baseball stadium to serve as the home field of the relocated MLB Oakland A’s.
At ceremonies Wednesday, some of the 127 employees who’ve been at The Mirage since it opened planned to mark its end with Lupo; Jim Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International and CEO of Seminole Gaming; and Alan Feldman, a longtime MGM Resorts casino executive who’s now a fellow at the gambling institute at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Feldman was Wynn’s first publicist at the new resort.
Locals and tourists gathered Tuesday night to watch the iconic Mirage Volcano erupt for the last time before The Mirage closes, CBS Las Vegas affiliate KLA-TV reported.
John Locher / AP
“It’s unbelievably different from anything you could possibly see anywhere on earth unless you are from Hawaii,” Las Vegas resident John Davidson told the station.
Davidson, who’s been coming to The Mirage for years, said it’s “kind of sad, we came to a show last week and it was one of the last ones. We will miss many things about The Mirage, but I know something good is coming.”
Mirage was Vegas game-changer
“The doors opened to a crush of humanity and it stayed like that for days,” Feldman recalled in an interview. “It’s hard to capture what The Mirage changed. One of the things was that Las Vegas became more than Elvis, showgirls, round beds and gambling.”
Costing $630 million, it was no simple gambling hall. It was the world’s largest hotel at the time. Guests were met by a faint piña colada scent and two bronze mermaid statues on the way to check in at a desk with a huge shark and reef fish tank behind it.
It had glitzy shops, celebrity chef restaurants and theater-sized showrooms featuring headliners like Johnny Mathis, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.
“Instead of neon, a garden of dozens of rich Canary Island palm trees and a cool refreshing waterfall,” Wynn recalled in a statement released Monday through his Las Vegas attorney, Donald Campbell. Wynn titled it “An Homage to Lady Mirage.”
Amid competition from casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the expansion of tribal gambling in California, Wynn noted that The Mirage was the first new hotel to be built in Las Vegas in years. Its completion ushered in a virtual doubling of the resort capacity over the next decade – more than 30,000 hotel rooms – making Las Vegas one of the fastest growing cities in America.
“To call The Mirage a catalyst would be an understatement,” Wynn wrote.
By 2000, new resorts included Excalibur, Luxor, Treasure Island, MGM Grand, New York-New York, Monte Carlo, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Venetian and Paris Las Vegas. Many were funded by Wall Street bonds. Wynn bought and demolished the 50-year-old Desert Inn to build and open his eponymous Wynn Resort in 2005.
Wynn, now 82 and living in Florida, paid a $10 million fine to Nevada gambling regulators last year and cut ties with the industry he helped shape to end a yearslong legal fight stemming from media reports in 2018 that he sexually harassed or assaulted several women at his hotels. He has always denied the allegations against him.
Feldman recalled that the design of The Mirage made it “an unusual and unexpected place, where people wondered, ‘How do you have all this in the middle of the desert?'”
Bo Bernhard, director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas International Gaming Institute, studies the emergence of what he terms the “fun economy” around the world. He said The Mirage gave Las Vegas an exportable product, like cars from Detroit, and set a standard for resort development in places like Singapore and Sydney.
The Seminole Tribe acquired the Hard Rock brand in 2007 and is 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.
An off-Strip former Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas was separately owned. A group that included billionaire Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, acquired that hotel-casino in 2018 from a Toronto investment giant for around $500 million. It was renovated and reopened in 2021 as Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
CBS News
After Tyre Nichols’ fatal beating, Memphis officer texted photo of bloodied man to ex-girlfriend, she testifies
A former Memphis police officer charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols sent his ex-girlfriend a photo of the badly injured man on the night he was punched, kicked and hit with a police baton following a traffic stop, according to trial testimony Wednesday.
Brittany Leake, a Memphis officer and Demetrius Haley’s former girlfriend, testified during the criminal trial that she was on the phone with Haley when officers pulled Nichols over for a traffic stop. She said she heard a “commotion,” including verbal orders for someone to give officers his hands.
The call ended, but Haley later texted the photo in a group chat comprising Haley, Leake and her godsister, she testified. Prosecutors displayed the photo for the jury. It showed Nichols with his eyes closed, on the ground with what appeared to be blood near his mouth and his hands behind his back.
Leake said that when she saw the photo, her reaction was: “Oh my God, he definitely needs to go to the Med.”
The Med is shorthand for Memphis’ trauma hospital.
The fatal beating, caught on police bodycams and street surveillance cameras, has sparked protests and calls for police reform. Officers said they pulled over Nichols for reckless driving, but Memphis’ police chief said there was no evidence to substantiate that claim.
Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith are on trial after pleading not guilty to charges that they deprived Nichols of his civil rights through excessive force and failure to intervene, and obstructed justice through witness tampering. Their trial began Sept. 9 and is expected to run three to four weeks.
George Walker IV / AP
The Memphis Police Department fired the three men, along with Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., after Nichols’ death. The beating was caught on police video, which was released publicly. The officers were later indicted on the federal charges. Martin and Mills have taken plea deals.
During her testimony Wednesday, Leake said she deleted the photo after she saw it and that sending such a photo is against police policy.
“I wasn’t offended, but it was difficult to look at,” she said.
Leake said Haley had sent her photos before of drugs, and of a person who had been injured in a car accident.
Earlier Wednesday, Martin was on the witness stand for a third day. Defense attorneys tried to show inconsistencies between Martin’s statements to investigators and his court testimony. Martin acknowledged lying about what happened to Memphis Police Department internal investigators, to try to cover up and “justify what I did.”
But Martin said he told the truth to FBI investigators after he pleaded guilty in August, including statements about feeling pressure on his duty belt where his gun was located during the traffic stop, but not being able to see if Nichols was trying to get his gun. Martin has testified that he said “let go of my gun” during the traffic stop.
Martin Zummach, the attorney for Justin Smith, asked Martin if he knew of any reasons why Nichols did not simply say, “I give up.”
“He’s out of it,” Martin said. “Disoriented.”
Martin testified that the situation escalated quickly when Haley pulled his gun and violently yanked Nichols from his car, using expletives and failing to tell Nichols why he had been pulled over and removed from the vehicle.
“He never got a chance to comply,” Martin said.
Nichols, who was Black, was pepper sprayed and hit with a stun gun during the traffic stop, but ran away, police video shows. The five officers, who also are Black, then beat him about a block from his home, as he called out for his mother.
Video shows the officers milling about and talking as Nichols struggled with his injuries. Nichols died Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating.
An autopsy report shows Nichols – the father of a boy who is now 7 – died from blows to the head. The report describes brain injuries, and cuts and bruises on his head and elsewhere on his body.
Jesse Guy testified that he was working as a paramedic for the Memphis Fire Department the night of the beating. He arrived at the location after two emergency medical technicians, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge.
Guy said he was not told about the medical problems Nichols had experienced before he arrived, and that Nichols was injured, seated on the ground and unresponsive.
Nichols had no pulse and was not breathing, and it “felt like he was lifeless,” Guy said.
In the ambulance, Guy performed CPR and provided mechanical ventilation, and Nichols had a pulse by the time he arrived at the hospital, the paramedic said.
Guy said Long and Sandridge did not say if they had checked Nichols’ pulse and heart rate, and they did not report if they had given him oxygen. When asked by one of Bean’s lawyers whether that information would have been helpful in treating Nichols, Guy said yes.
Long and Sandridge were fired for violating fire department policies after Nichols died. They have not been criminally charged.
The five officers also have been charged with second-degree murder in state court, where they pleaded not guilty. Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas.
Federal prosecutors have previously recommended a 40-year sentence for Martin. A date has not been set in state court yet.
Nichols worked for FedEx, and he enjoyed skateboarding and photography. The city of Sacramento, where Nichols grew up, named a skatepark in his honor. “Tyre fell in love with skateboarding at a young age and it wasn’t long before it became a part of his lifestyle,” states the resolution approved by the city council. He had a tattoo of his mother’s name.
“Tyre Nichols’ family have been praying for justice and accountability from the very beginning of this tragedy,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, the civil rights attorneys representing Nichols’ family, said in a statement when the trial began.
Boeing’s CEO said Wednesday that the company will begin furloughing “a large number” of employees to conserve cash during the strike by union machinists that began last week.
Chief Executive Kelly Ortberg said the people who would be required to take time off without pay starting in coming days include executives, managers and other employees based in the U.S.
“While this is a tough decision that impacts everybody, it is in an effort to preserve our long-term future and help us navigate through this very difficult time,” Ortberg said in a company-wide message to staff.
Boeing didn’t say how many people will face rolling furloughs, but the number is expected to run into the tens of thousands. The aerospace giant had 171,000 employees at the start of the year.
About 33,000 Boeing factory workers in the Pacific Northwest began a strike Friday after rejecting a proposal to raise pay by 25% over four years. They want raises of at least 40%, the return of a traditional pension plan and other improvements in the contract offer they voted down.
Scott Brauer / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The strike is halting production of several airplane models including Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max. The company gets more than half of the purchase price when new planes are delivered to buyers, so the strike will quickly hurt Boeing’s cash flow.
Ortberg said selected employees will be furloughed for one week every four weeks while retaining their benefits. The CEO and other senior executives will take pay cuts during the duration of the strike, he said, without stating how deep the cuts will be.
All work related to safety, quality, customer support and certification of new planes will continue during the furloughs, he said, including production of 787 Dreamliner jets, which are built by nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Ortberg said in a memo to employees that the company is talking to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers about a new contract agreement that could be ratified.
“However, with production paused across many key programs in the Pacific Northwest, our business faces substantial challenges and it is important that we take difficult steps to preserve cash and ensure that Boeing is able to successfully recover,” he said.
Boeing’s chief financial officer warned employees earlier this week that temporary layoffs were possible.
The company, which is based in Arlington, Virginia, but has most of its commercial-airplanes business located in the Pacific Northwest, is also cutting spending on suppliers, freezing hiring and eliminating most travel.
Despite two full days of talks assisted by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the union said Wednesday that no resolution had been reached and no additional negotiations were scheduled, according to CBS Seattle affiliate KIRO-TV.
Striking workers are picketing at several locations in the Seattle area, Oregon and California. The union, which recommended the offer that members later rejected by a 96% vote, is surveying the workers to learn what they want in a new contract. The union’s last strike at Boeing, in 2008, lasted about two months.
If the walkout doesn’t end soon, Boeing’s credit rating could be downgraded to non-investment or junk status, which would make borrowing more expensive. Shortly after the walkout began Friday, Moody’s put Boeing on review for a possible downgrade, and Fitch said a strike longer than two weeks would make a downgrade more likely.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.