Aladdin To Vanish

04/28/1998 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Bruce Haring

(4/28/98) - Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley were married there. But the biggest show in the Aladdin Hotel's history will take place Monday night, when the 32-year old Las Vegas casino falls in a spectacular explosion.

The Aladdin casino will go down to make way for a new resort, becoming the fifth old Las Vegas hotel to go out in a blaze of glory in the '90s. The Dunes was imploded in October 1993, making way for the $1.6 billion Bellagio resort, scheduled to open this Fall. The Landmark was felled in November 1995, replaced by a convention center parking lot. The Sands dropped a year later, and the $2 billion Venetian resort is rising in its place. The Hacienda came down in a 1996 New Year's Eve spectacle, and Mandalay Bay resort will open on that site next Spring. Since 1989, 10 megaresorts--each boasting 2500-3000 rooms and costing $80 million to $2 billion--have gone up, and five more are planned.

Once the Aladdin's prime 35-acre site is cleared, construction will start on a new 2600-room Aladdin Hotel and Casino, a second hotel/ casino with 1000 rooms (as a joint venture of parent Aladdin Gaming Ltd. and Planet Hollywood), and a shopping complex named Desert Passages.

The Aladdin's roots go back to 1962, when New York toy manufacturer Edwin Lowe opened an English Tudor-style motel named the Tally-Ho. It offered no gambling and lasted 10 months. The motel reopened in 1964 as King's Crown. Milton Prell, one of the state's early gambling figures, bought the resort in 1966 and renamed it the Aladdin.

In ensuing years, the resort faced a host of financial and legal problems. Mob figures from St. Louis, Detroit and Tokyo were found to have had their fingers in the genie's till at various times. Organized crime allegations also surfaced when singer Wayne Newton teamed with gambling figure Ed Torres to buy the Aladdin for $85 million in 1980. Their bid bested the yearlong efforts of Johnny Carson, then host of The Tonight Show. Newton sold his share to Torres 21 months later in what was termed a split over business philosophies.

Just a week after Newton received a license from the state of Nevada to operate the Aladdin, an NBC news report alleged he got the money to buy the hotel from mobsters. Newton sued for defamation and in November 1986 was awarded $22.8 million by a federal jury. Testimony showed that although he did have contact with a gangster, the funds for the Aladdin were borrowed from a Las Vegas bank. But a judge reduced the award to $5.3 million, and then NBC successfully appealed and had the verdict reversed. Newton appealed the reversal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.