After 45 years, Tiffany Dry Cleaners is movin’ on up

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, Sept. 6, 2015 | 2 a.m.

About a dozen years ago, I toured the then-new Colosseum at Caesars Palace with a group of architects in town for a convention. As we assembled to be led through the venue, one of the tour guides pressed an adhesive nametag against my jacket. Which was almost brand new and made of leather.

So after the tour, I pulled the tag away. Left in its place was a phantom-like rectangle, the black dye from the leather jacket stuck to the back of the nametag. I asked around for someone who could restore the jacket to its new status, and a friend who had lived in Las Vegas for several decades said, “Tiffany Cleaners in the Commercial Center.”

That’s when I met Dan and Judy Del Rossi and began a long friendship with the proprietors of the dry-cleaning business that opened at the Commercial Center on East Sahara Avenue in 1970. Tiffany Couture Cleaners has long cared for the costumes of some of Las Vegas’ most famous productions and entertainers, among them the Cirque shows “Zarkana,” “Ka,” “Zumanity” and “O”; “Absinthe” at Caesars Palace; “Human Nature” at Venetian; Donny & Marie and Olivia Newton-John at Flamingo and “Steve Wynn’s Showstoppers” at Wynn/Encore.

Through the years it has not been uncommon to see my own clothes being stored in the same space as the costumes from “Monty Python’s Spamalot” at the Wynn; once I was dropping by for a pickup and a woman walked in carrying a tuxedo worn the night before by Wayne Newton at the Tropicana. Tiffany has the largest fur storage vault in the city.

This all took place at Tiffany’s Commercial Center location, but the business has outgrown that space and will be moving out at the end of September after a 45-year residency. The new drop-off point is 2797 S. Maryland Parkway at Sunrise City Plaza, which is in the same neighborhood but outside Commercial Center’s footprint. The opening date for the new location is Sept. 30, as the East Sahara establishment is locked for good.

In fact, the Commercial Center Tiffany Cleaners location, well known for its scripted (and now faded) façade, has not been a cleaning center since November, when the Del Rossis moved their production plant to 5981 McLeod Drive. The fortress serves as the clearinghouse for all orders, including the costumes from the big Strip shows and the personal wardrobes of their longtime customers.

But the Commercial Center location, where upward of 150 businesses of all ilk and culture (including the famed Lotus of Siam restaurant and infamous Green Door social club) share space, has been the business’s anchor since 1970. Dan Del Rossi’s father and two uncles, who owned a dry-cleaning business in eastern Pennsylvania, moved to Las Vegas that year and launched the business. During that time, it has held a spot next to another decades-old family business, John Fish Jewelers.

That Del Rossi is uprooting and moving out of Commercial Center might seem a poignant moment for his customers, especially those who have entrusted him with their most elegant, intricate and sentimental attire. But that is not necessarily the case for the Del Rossis today.

This move is long overdue.

“Is it nostalgic? Maybe a few years ago I would have felt more that way, but lately, not really,” Del Rossi says. “The location is more a liability now, for our regular, steady customers and entertainers from the Strip. The center itself is doing OK, it looks OK, but we need a building that has better air conditioning and is bigger, brighter, cleaner, safer … more welcoming, all those things.”

Nonetheless, Del Rossi says the move marks the end of an era in Las Vegas history.

“For the most part, I would say that, yes,” Del Rossi says, adding, “but we are looking at this as the opening of a new location and a new era for us.”