The iconic Tropicana Las Vegas Resort is shutting down to make way for a new stadium.

One of Las Vegas’ longest-standing Strip casinos is shuttering its doors for good. Tropicana Las Vegas is expected to close Tuesday, just two days shy of its 67th anniversary. Once a crown jewel on the Strip, the ancient hotel has struggled to stand out in recent decades amid a sea of megaresorts.

A demolition is expected to take place later this year to make room for a new Major League Baseball stadium. Once the Tropicana is gone, the only remaining Strip resort from the 1950s will be the Sahara.

While the Tropicana’s demolition is “sad for historians,” according to University of Nevada, Las Vegas, history professor Michael Green, it’s not an unexpected move from a city notorious for pulling down its history to make space for new projects.

“Hotels built in the 1950s were not designed for the 2020s,” Green told USA TODAY. The Tropicana’s closing “reflects Las Vegas changing to keep up with and get ahead of everyone else. The times have changed.”

The destruction is bittersweet for Antioco Carrillo, a 56-year-old Las Vegas resident who worked in the property’s kitchen when he was 20. It was his first employment in the States after arriving from Mexico in 1987.

While the facility has undergone modifications since his tenure as an employee, Carrillo said strolling through the site with his husband this past weekend left him with a sense of nostalgia.

He captured photos of the stained glass dome over the casino, the conference center, and the pool. He recalls feeling small his first time inside the resort, which felt like a “city within a city.” He thought back to all of his previous coworkers—a melting pot of employees from all corners of the world, he said.

“It’s the property that gave me the opportunity to live here,” he remarked. “But I think it is a positive move, at the end of the day, because the city is transforming.”

With a $15 million price tag, the Tropicana was the most costly Las Vegas resort built to date when it opened in April 1957. Dubbed “the Tiffany of the Strip” as an homage to the famed jeweler, the 300-room resort was considered a sumptuous hideaway.

It garnered high accolades from local media at the time, with the Las Vegas Sun gushing over the “fantastically beautiful” resort with its “colorful, mosaic-tiled entrance” and spacious rooms, while the Las Vegas Review-Journal described the Tropicana as having a “quiet dignity.”

The resort would go on to become well-known for its entertainment. It was the first Las Vegas stage to exhibit the magicians Siegfried & Roy as part of the Folies Bergère production, a cabaret show brought from Paris that would go on to delight tourists with its topless showgirls for nearly 50 years. The property’s Blue Room was another big attraction, presenting big-name jazz performers like Louis Armstrong.

In its early years, the Tropicana was “one of the elites of the Strip,” said Green, who claimed that in addition to its entertainment offerings, “it was also known as having been opened by the mob.”

While ties to organized crime weren’t unprecedented for Las Vegas casinos, Green said the mob did a terrible job of hiding its role at the Tropicana. Just one month after the property’s grand opening, the gangster Frank Costello was shot in New York City. A paper in his pocket displayed gross win data from the Tropicana’s casino, tying him to a skimming operation at the resort.

Management changed hands a number of times since then, with the most recent buyers, Bally’s Corp., purchasing the building for $148 million in 2022.

“I think part of the property’s decline is that it went through several ownership changes when the other hotels were not, which meant different approaches and different plans,” Green said. “Then it was surrounded by these megaresorts. And in a sense, it wanted to establish its own niche by not being one of them and having amenities—but not the amenities to the degree the others did.”

The Tropicana’s casino floor is planned to close at 3 a.m. Tuesday, while the food and beverage departments are set to close by midday, according to the property’s website. Preparations to pull down the resort will begin “shortly after,” with a projected demolition date planned for October.

“What they say is true. Las Vegas is not a sentimental town. When people think they can do something better with the property, they will do that,” said David Schwartz, a history professor at UNLV.

Once the facility is knocked down, around 9 acres are slated to go to the Athletics for their new stadium. The MLB franchise, which now plays at the Oakland Coliseum, has revealed renderings of a 33,000-seat facility.

But memories of the property will live on. The Tropicana said on social media that it will be cooperating with UNLV, the Neon Museum, and the Showgirl Museum to “preserve the heritage and items of sentimental value within the Tropicana.” Additionally, lovers of the resort can acquire goods like guest room furniture, gaming stools, and linens at the facility’s pre-demolishing liquidation sale.

“I think I’ve made peace with the fact that we live in a city where we’re pushing forward with new things,” Carrillo added. “It’s sad to see the hotel go and the whole property go, but it’s exciting to look at the new opportunities this city is going to have.”