DOME FREE: Mirage Las Vegas Atrium Removed

Posted on: January 7, 2025, 09:03h. 

Last updated on: January 8, 2025, 10:39h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

To those who only saw the initial renderings of how the Hard Rock Las Vegas would look when it opens in spring 2027, this is gonna hurt.

On Jan. 7, 2025, cranes remove the 157-foot-long curved glass panels that different cranes hoisted into place in 1988. The remaining structure will be demolished shortly. (Image: Vital Vegas via X/@jamesinvegas)

As we told you right after the Mirage closed its doors last July, the cherished atrium won’t survive the transition. And right now, cranes on the site are seeing to that.

Pane and Suffering

The initial Hard Rock renderings showed the atrium still intact. (Image: Seminole Tribe)

Though the first renderings released by the Seminole Tribe of Florida — which purchased the operating rights to the Mirage from MGM Resorts for $1.1 billion in December 2022 — showed the old Mirage atrium still in place at the new Hard Rock, the tribe either changed its mind, or those renderings were inaccurate.

The sad reality is that only the guts of the Mirage casino and towers will remain, as well as the villas, once the $4-$5 billion transformation is complete.

As the main entrance to The Mirage, the atrium is the memory all guests have of entering the game-changing Las Vegas Strip property for the first time. And, as visionary Steve Wynn intended, it is an indelible one.

The atrium was a passageway through a lush rainforest, complete with a cascading waterfall, towering palm trees, 100 varieties of exotic plants and flowers, and a 100-foot-high domed skylight providing natural sunshine.

With the atrium, Wynn successfully imparted his guests with the feeling of entering a Polynesian paradise smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert — a resort so crammed with luxury, entertainment, and surprises it would be a destination in itself.

Rotunda-Struck

The atrium took four full-time gardeners more than 160 hours a week to maintain. (Image: MGM Resorts)

Many question destroying the atrium, since the space could have served as a perfectly functional and beautiful way to enter the second Hard Rock Las Vegas. (The first reopened as Virgin Hotels Las Vegas in 2021.)

“That’s so sad,” commented @wagerbetsports beneath a photo of the atrium’s depaning tweeted by Vital Vegas’ on Monday..

“They should have kept it!” added @ButterGinn.

“😢😢😢,” wrote Andrew McDublin.

When you consider Hard Rock’s perspective, however, there really was no other choice. And that’s precisely because Wynn’s plan to indelibly implant an atrium memory in all first-time Mirage visitors succeeded so wildly.

Preserving the atrium would serve only as an active and constant reminder of what used to occupy the space, stoking feelings of nostalgia instead of wonder about whatever casino resort took its place.