Vegas casino goes down with a bang

The New Frontier casino-hotel was imploded early Tuesday in a violent end to the second property to open on the Strip and the scene of Elvis Presley’s Las Vegas debut.

Over 1,000 pounds of explosives felled the 16-story hotel tower as reporters and bystanders watched. An $8-billion resort bearing the Plaza brand will rise in its place and is set to open in 2011.

Elad Group owner and Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva, a partner in the new resort project, offered handshakes and hugs after the tower came down.

An easterly breeze helped to quickly dissipate the dust.

With a cowboy motif, the New Frontier was the Strip’s first themed casino. The low-key gambling hall opened as the Last Frontier in 1942 and later took on a Space Age look before returning to its Wild West roots.

Over its 65 years it played host to such entertainers as Ronald Reagan, Wayne Newton, and Siegfried and Roy. Presley performed for the first time in Las Vegas at the resort in 1956. It had become known for bikini bull riding, cheap rooms and $5 craps before it closed its doors for good in July.

IDB Group and Elad Group, the owners of the Plaza hotel in New York, said the new property would include a luxury hotel with about 3,500 rooms, private residences, retail space and a casino bearing the Plaza brand to reach the highest end of the market.

The destruction of the New Frontier was the latest step in a dramatic, and expensive, face-lift for the northern Strip. The Stardust hotel-casino was imploded in March.

“It’s another budget option on the Strip that’s gone,” said David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “The future is really high-end.”

The first of Donald Trump’s gold-glass, billion-dollar-plus condominium towers is to open behind the New Frontier site early next year.

Steve Wynn plans to open the $2.2-billion Encore in early 2009, and the $2.8-billion Fontainebleau is scheduled to open farther north later that year. MGM Mirage is planning its own multibillion-dollar resort with Kerzner International and Dubai World at the north end of the Strip for 2012.

“It just became an epicenter of Vegas,” said Phil Ruffin, who sold the 34.5-acre site to Elad for $1.24 billion in May.