Las Vegas Strip icon the Tropicana could be torn down to make way for a new baseball stadium for the Oakland Athletics.
If and when the landmark is demolished, a chunk of Vegas history will vanish along with it and all the midcentury glamour the historical venue featured.
When it was first unveiled, the property boasted a massive 60-foot fountain as the hotel played host to illusionists Siegfried and Roy who debuted their show at the hotel while an array of stars were filmed there including Sean Connery's James Bond in Diamond's Are Forever and The Godfather Corleones.
The Tropicana became synonymous with the vibrancy of everything Vegas had to offer with its Folies Bergère cabaret featuring feathered showgirls.
But decades have passed since the Tropicana's heyday and now only a few customers frequent the dimly lit casino.
On a recent visit by the New York Times one weekday afternoon only a handful of people were gathered at the bar while many of the blackjack and roulette tables remained closed.
It is a far cry from the hotel's peak.
The hotel opened in 1957 as Cuban-themed property with little else in Las Vegas at the time. The hotel was said to be 'famous from the day it opened,' according to an article from the Las Vegas Sun at the time.
'Unlike many other Strip layouts, the Tropicana was designed and built as a resort hotel, not as a casino and night club with incidental guest rooms,' a description of its opening read.
'Wide sweeping drives approach the hotel from the highways, closely adjoined by a sparkling fountain rising 60 feet and cascading water down into a brilliant pool 100 feet in diameter.'
'Mosaic–tile decorations flank the entrance covered by an upsweeping canopy stretching out 40 feet and measuring 130 feet in length.'
But there were also rumors of mob ties with the facility from the onset.
In 1967, Siegfried and Roy left Paris to become Las Vegas mainstays, first debuting at the Tropicana's Folies Bergere show. The duo started 14th on the bill, and by 1978 they were the finale.
By the 1970s, the Tropicana started to lose out to competitors such as Caesars Palace. By the late 70s, it was again involved in mob activity and exposed by an FBI investigation into Vegas casinos and the mafia.
Joe Agosto, the owner of the Folies Bergere show, oversaw skimming money from the casino.
'Mr. Agosto testified at a monthlong trial this summer that the $280,000 in gambling proceeds were skimmed from the Tropicana from June 1978 to February 1979, transported to Kansas City and split between underworld figures there and in Chicago. The ploy of skimming avoids taxes on the gambling winnings,' a New York Times article from an 1983 trial read.
Mitzi Stauffer Briggs owned the casino at the time and admitted years later that she realized she was a pawn.
'We were some kind of unauthorized bank for those people,' Briggs told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2009.
The investigations and scandal led to the casino's sale and in the 1990s, part of the Tropicana's site was sold to MGM to make way for the MGM Grand Casino - as modern casinos took over the Las Vegas strip.
Tropicana has seen several owners over the years and changes to the structure. In 2010, the hotel demolished two wings.
Today the owner is Bally's Corporation, which operates casinos in Vegas and across the globe.
Tropicana is also known for being the filming location for several movies. In 1971, James Bond's Diamonds Are Forever used the casino for Sean Connery's Bond adventures to Las Vegas.
Viva Las Vegas and War of the Colossal Beast were also shot at the casino.
Vegas played host to legendary acts including the Rat Pack, led by Frank Sinatra which put the city's name on the map. Few of the iconic casinos from that era remain.
In 1993, about 200,000 people watched as a pirate ship at the newly-opened Treasure Island resort blew up The Dunes, built in 1955, to make way for the $1.6 billion Bellagio Hotel and Casino.
The Hacienda, erected in 1956, was wired with hundreds of fireworks on New Year's Eve, blowing it up before collapsing.
In 2016, the Riviera Hotel and Casino, built in 1955, was turned to dust after an all-out fireworks display.
'It's sort of an inevitable kind of process here in Las Vegas, where we're in a constant state of evolution but that doesn't mean we can't be a little bit sad about,' said Geoff Schumacher, author of Sun, Sin & Suburbia: The History of Modern Las Vegas to the Times.
These days, dazzling resorts have emerged from the desert as the city rebrands itself as a professional sports destination. Tropicana has been struggling since the 1970s - essentially since Caesars Palace opened. 바다이야기
Last week, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo signed a bill to finance up to $380 million of a $1.5 billion stadium project aimed at attracting the Oakland Athletics to the Las Vegas Strip.
The project would see the Tropicana demolished as the city continues to evolve.
'The Trop is obviously iconic, but it is, really, in a lot of ways, economically obsolete,' chairman of Bally's Corporation, the current owner of the hotel and casino, Soo Kim said.
'It literally is part of the glitz and glamour of Vegas, but it hasn't been that for decades,'
Bally's has now reached a deal with the Athletics, allocating nine acres of the 35-acre parcel of land specifically for the stadium.
Major League Baseball's owners need only approve of the relocation and the Tropicana's days will be numbered.
Las Vegas had once been considered unsuitable for major sports because of its strong association with gambling on games - but that has now become legal in many states.
When the Athletics relocate, they would join the NFL, NHL, WNBA, and NCAA men's basketball tournament.
Last week, The Golden Knights ice hockey team, Las Vegas' first major sports franchise, won the Stanley Cup.
Backers of the project say in addition to creating 14,000 construction jobs and permanent jobs subject to collective bargaining, Major League Baseball on the Las Vegas Strip will build on the excitement surrounding the Raiders, the Golden Knights and the WNBA's Aces in a city that had no major professional sports before 2016.
