Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Hard Rock CEO details plans for revamping Mirage in Las Vegas

Mirage Reopens

Wade Vandervort

The Mirage volcano erupts on the night of the casino’s reopening, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020.

Hard Rock International plans to expand the Mirage casino, rebuild the pool areas and create a music museum, in addition to adding a guitar-shaped hotel tower as it rebrands the Strip’s original megaresort.

“We will completely rebuild it — every inch of the public areas,” Hard Rock CEO Jim Allen said Wednesday during a meeting before the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Last year, the hospitality and entertainment company agreed to take over operations of the Mirage from MGM Resorts International as part of a $1.075 billion cash transaction. The property will eventually be rebranded as the Hard Rock.

The sale is pending Nevada regulatory approval and is expected to close this month, when Hard Rock officials go before the Nevada Gaming Commission.

But don’t plan on saying goodbye to the Mirage anytime soon. Hard Rock plans to operate the resort as is for at least 18 months after the takeover, Allen said.

Drawings for the new construction won’t be complete until the summer, which means completion is years away, he said.

Hard Rock, owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, intends to “completely gut the casino” and expand the resort’s convention and ballroom space, Allen said.

The casino will go from about 800 to 2,000 slot machines, and the number of table games will increase from about 50 to 160, he said.

“We like to do things big,” he said. “It is our intention, subject to approval, to build an all-suites guitar-shaped building, very similar to what we did in South Florida. We think this becomes another icon for the Las Vegas Strip skyline.”

The tribe operates the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Fla., with the 450-foot-tall Guitar Hotel. The tower has LED lights built into it and features daily light shows choreographed to music.

Once the renovations and additions are complete, the Las Vegas property will have just over 3,600 hotel rooms, up from about 3,000 rooms today, Allen said.

The company also plans to “completely level” the Mirage’s pool areas and landscaping, Allen said.

“We will build a new Hard Rock entertainment and pool destination experience out back,” he said. “That’s about 2 acres today, but we will expand that to about 5 acres.”

Plans also call for construction of a music museum between the Mirage and Treasure Island, Allen said. Hard Rock is known for its collection of over 86,000 pieces of of music memorabilia.

The company is also planning a new theater that will seat nearly 6,300 people and a platform for tourists to take photos with the guitar tower in the background, Allen said.

“We know people are going to love to take selfies in front of the guitar,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Hard Rock said Wednesday that further details about the property’s transition would be released later.

As far as how Hard Rock will handle employee transition, Allen was mostly noncommittal. The Mirage has over 3,600 employees.

“Right now, it is our intention to keep all Mirage employees,” Allen said. “We’ve certainly been asked if there will be any immediate layoffs… I don’t want to mislead anyone — certainly we’ll look at the whole construction process. We certainly believe we will operate this building at least for 18 months as is.”

The Mirage, built by casino mogul Steve Wynn for nearly $700 million, opened in late 1989. It was the first of the megaresorts that would come to dominate the Strip.